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, ,-,y POEMS 



BY 



LUCY LARCOM 




BOSTON: 
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., 

SUCCESSORS TO TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
1869. 



'^'^LZ%^ 



.P 



5 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



University Press: Welch, Bigklow, & Co., 
Cajmbridgs. 



STo tje pernors 

OF 

ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER, 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 
BY ONE 

WHO OWES ITS BEST SUGGESTIONS TO THE 
INSPIRATION OF HER FRIENDSHIP. 



T 



HIS is a haunted world. It hath no breeze 
But is the echo of some voice beloved : 
Its pines have human tones -; its billows wear 
The color and the sparkle of dear eyes. 
Its flowers are sweet with touch of tender hands 
That once clasped ours. All things are beautiful 
Because of something lovelier than themselves, 
Which breathes within them, and will never die. -^ 
Haunted, — but not with any spectral gloom ; 
Earth is suffused, inhabited by heaven. 

These blossoms, gathered in familiar paths. 
With dear companions now passed out of sight. 
Shall not be laid upon their graves. They live, 
Since love is deathless. Pleasure now nor pride 
Is theirs in mortal wise, but hallowing thoughts 
Will meet the offering, of so little worth, 
Wanting the benison death has made divine. • 



And visible friends link hands with those unseen, 
Veiled in immortal light ; their love is one. 
And, for love's sake, they will accept these waifs, 
Laid at their feet with a heart's gratitude. 
And sadness that it has no worthier gift. 



CONTENTS 



SEASIDE AND HILLSIDE. 

Fagb 

Hilary 3 

On the Beach 6 

A Sea Glimpse 9 

Hannah Binding Shoes 11 

Skipper Ben .14 

The Light-Houses 17 

Bittersweet Shadows 19 

Diver and Voyager 22 

The Legend of Skadi 24 

The Old School-House 28 

Elsie in Illinois 31 

My Mountain 37 

Sonnets. 

The Distant Mountain-Range 41 

The Presence 42 

The Farewell 43 

At Winnipesaukee 44 



CHILD AND WOMAN. 

Little Nannie 49 

Swinging in the Barn 51 

Watching the Snow 53 



viii CONTENTS. 

Prudence 57 

Blue-eyed Grace 60 

Rock and Rill 64 

In the Rain 66 

The Schoolmistress 68 

Getting Along 72 

Unwedded 75 

Chriemhild 80 

Legend of a Veil 85 

FROM WITHOUT. 

Entangled 99 

The Riddle of Beauty loi 

Hints 104 

The Death of June no 

The Indian Summer 115 

Would You? 118 

Better 120 

The Rose Enthroned 122 



WAR-MEMORIES. 

The Nineteenth of April 129 

The Sinking of the Merrimack 132 

Weaving 134 

Waiting for News 138 

A Loyal Woman's No 144 

Re-enlisted 148 

Canticle de Profundis 153 

Tolling 157 

The Flag iS9 



CONTENTS. IX 

MISCELLANEOUS 

Hand in Hand with Angels 163 

Eureka 167 

Psyche at School 170 

Godsends 173 

Thirty-five 176 

Sleep-Song 182 

So Little 184 

Three Old Saws 186 

A Word with my Soul 188 

The Weeping Prophet 192 

Nature and the Book 195 

Sabbath Days 199 

A White Sunday 202 

Sonnets. 

Drought 208 

Springs in the Desert 209 

The Secret 210 

"Himself he cannot save" 212 

"As Strangers and Pilgrims" 215 

Monica and Augustine 217 



DEVOTIONAL. 

A Thanksgiving 227 

Our Prayers 231 

At the Beautiful Gate 233 

My Angel-Dress 236 

" Follow thou me " 238 

Thy will be done 240 

The Still Hour 242 



X CONTENTS. 

THE COMING LIFE. 

Heaven's Need . 247 

t The Chamber called Peace 250 

A Year in Heaven 254 

By the Fireside 258 

Near Shore 261 

. Across the River 265 

More Life 268 



NOTES 271 



SEASIDE AND HILLSIDE. 



HILARY. 

T_T ILARY, 

"■■ "^ Summer calls thee, o'er the sea ! 
Like white flowers upon the tide, 
In and out the vessels glide ; 
But no wind on all the main 
Sends thy blithe soul home again : 
Every salt breeze moans for thee, 
Hilary ! 

Hilary, 
Welcome Summer's step will be, 
Save to those beside whose door 
Doleful birds sit evermore 
Singing, " Never comes he here, 
Who made every season's cheer." 
Dull the June that brings not thee, 
Hilary ! 



HILARY. 

Hilary, 
What strange world has sheltered thee? 
Here the soil beneath thy feet 
Rang with songs, and blossomed sweet 
Still the blue skies ask of Earth, 
Blind and dumb without thy mirth, 
Where she hides thy heart of glee, 
Hilary! 

Hilary, 
All things shape a sigh for thee ! 
O'er the waves, among the flowers, 
Through the lapse of odorous hours, . 
Breathes a lonely, longing sound, 
As of something sought, unfound : 
Lorn are all things, lorn are we, 
Hilary ! 

Hilary ! 
Oh, to sail in quest of thee. 

On the trade-wind's steady tune, 
On the hurrying monsoon. 
Far through torrid seas, that lave 
Dry, hot sands, — a breathless grave. 
Sad as vain the search would be, 
Hilary ! 



HILARY. 

Hilary, 
Chase the sorrow from the sea ! 
Summer-heart, bring summer near, 
Warm, and fresh, and airy-clear ! 
Dead thou art not ! dead is pain ; 
Now Earth sees and sings again ; 
Death, to hold thee. Life must be, 
Hilary ! 



ON THE BEACH. 



ON THE BEACH. 

"\T TE stroll as children, thou and I, 

Upon the sandy beach, 
With younger children playing nigh ; 
The surf-boats dance, the ships go by, 
Beyond the cape's vague reach. 



It is a comfort once to be 

Like those young hearts again ; 
To feel, O friend beloved, with thee, 
The broad refreshment of the sea. 
In weary soul and brain. 



The white feet pattering on the sand. 

The wings that dip and rise. 
The mower's whistle from the land. 
And girlhood's laugh, and murmuring strand. 

All blend and harmonize. 



ON THE BEACH. 

And glimmering beach, and plover's flight, 

And that long surge that rolls 
Through bands of green and purple light, 
Are fairer to our human sight, 

Because of human souls. 

Seest thou yon fleet of anchored isles 

Upon the sea-line gray ? 
My thoughts o'erfloat these murmurous miles, 
To land where bygone summer smiles 

On gorge and sheltering bay. 

I wander with a spirit there. 

Along the enchanted shore : 
We breathe the soft, sea-scented air. 
And think no isle is half so fair 

As rocky Appledore. 

She turns to me her large, dark eyes : — 

Were ever eyes so true } — 
The twilight flushes, fades, and dies ; 
The beacon flames ; the white stars rise 

Across pale gulfs of blue. 



ON THE BEACH. 

Those eyes on earth no longer shine ; 

And yet it seems to me 
I see their light, O friend, in thine ; 
They add a tenderness divine 

Unto this tremulous sea. 

Seen and unseen are interblent ; 

The waves that hither roll 
In whiter curves of foam are spent, 
And deeper seems the green content 

Of shore, for her sweet soul. 

Can love be hid in funeral urn, 

Or shut within the grave ? 
Life passes, only to return. 
In tints that glow, and stars that burn 

Upon the refluent wave. 

The land is dearer for the sea, 

The ocean for the shore : 
These sands of time too drear would be, 
If heaven's unguessed eternity 

Rolled not our feet before. 



A SEA GLIMPSE. 



A SEA GLIMPSE. 

T__r IGH tide, and the year at ebb 

The sea is a dream to-day : 
The sky is a gossamer web 

Of sapphire, and pearl, and gray : 

A veil over rock and boat ; 

A breath on the tremulous blue, 
Where the dim sails lie afloat. 

Or, unaware, slip from view. 

They veer to the rosy ray ; 

They dusk to the violet shade ; 
Like a thought they flit away ; 

Like a foolish hope, they fade. 

But listen ! a sudden plash ! 

A ship is heaving in sight. 
With a stir, and a noisy dash 

Of the salt foam, seething white. 



10 A SEA GLIMPSE. 

Tar-grimed and weather-stained, 
The sailors shout from her deck: 

Naught of the sky blue-veined, 
Or the dreamy waves they reck. 

And the sunburnt girl, who stands 

Where her feet on the wet wrack slip, 

Eyes shaded with lithe, brown hands, — 
She sees but the coming ship. 



HANNAH BINDING SHOES. II 



HANNAH BINDING SHOES. 

TDOOR lone Hannah, 

Sitting at the window, binding shoes. 
Faded, wrinkled, 
Sitting, stitching, in a mournful muse. 
Bright-eyed beauty once was she, 
When the bloom was on the tree : 
Spring and winter, 
Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. 



Not a neighbor. 
Passing nod or answer will refuse, 

To her whisper, 
" Is there from the fishers any news ? '* 
O, her heart's adrift, with one 
On an endless voyage gone ! 
Night and morning, 
Hannah 's at the window, binding shoes. 



5 HANNAH BINDING SHOES. 

Fair young Hannah, 
Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gayly woos : 

Hale and clever. 
For a willing heart and hand he sues. 
May-day skies are all aglow. 
And the waves are laughing so ! 
For her wedding 
Hannah leaves her window -and her shoes. 



May is passing : 
Mid the apple boughs a pigeon coos. 

Hannah shudders, 
For the mild southwester mischief brews. 
Round the rocks of Marblehead, 
Outward bound, a schooner sped : 
Silent, lonesome, 
Hannah 's at the window, binding shoes. 



'T is November, 
Now no tear her wasted cheek bedews. 

From Newfoundland 
Not a sail returning will she lose, 



HANNAH BINDING SHOES. 1 3 

Whispering hoarsely, "Fishermen, 
Have you, have you heard of Ben ? " 
Old with watching, 
Hannah 's at the window, binding shoes. 



Twenty winters 
Bleach and tear the ragged shore she views. 

Twenty seasons : — 
Never one has brought her any news. 
Still her dim eyes silently 
Chase the white sails o'er the sea: 
Hopeless, faithful, 
Hannah *s at the window, binding shoes. 



14 SKIPPER BEN. 



SKIPPER BEN. 

Q AILING away! 

Losing the breath of the shores in May, 
Dropping down from the beautiful bay, 
Over the sea-slope vast and gray ! 
And the skipper's eyes with a mist are blind ; 
For a vision comes on the rising wind, 
Of a gentle face, that he leaves behind, 
And a heart that throbs through the fog-bank dim, 

Thinking of him. 

• 

Far into night 
He watches the gleam of the lessening Hght 
Fixed on the dangerous island height, 
That bars the harbor he loves from sight. 
And he wishes, at dawn, he could tell the tale 
Of how they had weathered the southwest gale, 
To brighten the cheek that had grown so pale 
With a wakeful night among spectres grim, — 

Terrors for him. 



SKIPPER BEN. 15 

Yo-heave-yo ! 
Here 's the Bank where the fishermen go. 
Over the schooner's sides they throw 
Tackle and bait to the deeps below. 
And Skipper Ben in the water sees, 
When its ripples curl to the light land breeze, 
Something that stirs like his apple trees ; 
And two soft eyes that beneath them swim, 

Lifted to him. 

Hear the wind roar, 
And the rain through the slit sails tear and pour! 
" Steady ! we '11 scud by the Cape Ann shore, 
Then hark to the Beverly bells once more ! " 
And each man worked with the will of ten ; 
While up in the rigging, now and then, 
The lightning glared in the face of Ben, 
Turned to the black horizon's rim, 

Scowling on him. 

Into his brain 
Burned with the iron of hopeless pain. 
Into thoughts that grapple, and eyes that strain, 
Pierces the memory, cruel and vain ! 



1 6 SKIPPER BEN. 

Never again shall he walk at ease, 
Under his blossoming apple trees, 
That whisper and sway to the sunset breeze. 
While the soft eyes float where the sea-gulls skim, 
Gazing with him. 

How they went down 
Never was known in the still old town. 
Nobody guessed how the fisherman brown, 
With the look of despair that was half a frown. 
Faced his fate in the furious night, — 
Faced the mad billows with hunger white. 
Just within hail of the beacon-light 
That shone on a woman sweet and trim, 

Waiting for him. 

Beverly bells. 
Ring to the tide as it ebbs and swells ! 
His was the anguish a moment tells, — 
The passionate sorrow death quickly knells. 
But the wearing wash of a lifelong woe 
Is left for the desolate heart to know. 
Whose tides with the dull years come and go. 
Till hope drifts dead to its stagnant brim. 

Thinking: of him. 



THE LIGHT-HOUSES. 1/ 



THE LIGHT-HOUSES. 

'npWO pale sisters, all alone, 

■^ On an island bleak and bare, 
Listening to the breakers' moan, 

Shivering in the chilly air ; 
Looking inland towards a hill, 

On whose top one aged tree 
Wrestles with the storm-wind's will, 

Rushing, wrathful, from the sea. 

Two dim ghosts at dusk they seem. 

Side by side, so white and tall. 
Sending one long, hopeless gleam 

Down the horizon's darkened wall. 
Spectres, strayed from plank or spar. 

With a tale none lives to tell, 
Gazing at the town afar, 

Where unconscious widows dwell. 

Two white angels of the sea. 

Guiding wave-worn wanderers home ; 

B 



THE LIGHT-HOUSES. 

Sentinels of hope they be, 

Drenched with sleet, and dashed with foam. 
Standing there in loneliness. 

Fireside joys for men to keep ; 
Through the midnight slumberless 

That the quiet shore may sleep. 

Two bright eyes awake all night 

To the fierce moods of the sea ; 
Eyes that only close when light 

Dawns on lonely hill and tree. 
O kind watchers ! teach us, too, 

Steadfast courage, sufferance long! 
Where an eye is turned to you. 

Should a human heart grow strong. 



BITTERSWEET SHADOWS. 



BITTERSWEET SHADOWS. 

/^FF we drifted, yesterday, 

^■^^ Till the sea-foam dashed the spray 

Of the woodland bittersweet, 
Leaning from a sunlit cove 
Where amid salt winds it throve, 

Swaying to the tide's low beat. 

O, the afternoon was fair! 
Murmurous echoes swept the air, — 

Sigh of pine, and dip of oar : 
Every breeze that passed us, went 
Laden with some rare wood-scent, 

Loitering down the dreamy shore. 

And we lingered, loitering too, 
Where the heavy cedars threw 

Shadows on the water's gold ; 
Till again in glee afloat. 
Like a bird our idle boat 

Skimmed the wavelets manifold. 



20 BITTERSWEET SHADOWS. 

Then, the crystal channel won, 
In its deep the shallop shone, 

Sails of silver, prow of pearl : 
Hidden ledges brake that dream, 
Sucking down the flash and gleam 

Underneath their high-tide swirl. 

Free again, broad sunshine found. 
Slid the boat on, greenly wound 

With its veil of bittersweet. 
Tangling round the sunk rock's edge. 
Catching streamers of sea-sedge- 

From the sheen beneath our feet. 

Anchored in the dusk, a spell 
From the folds of twilight fell 

On the bay's black, star-strewn floor. 
Awe with that weird glitter crept 
Shuddering through our thoughts ; we stept 

Gladly on firm land once more. 

Trailing home the bittersweet. 
Such dim ending was but meet 
For an afternoon so rare. 



BITTERSWEET SHADOWS. 21 

Was the date of yesterday ? 
Years since then have slipt away ; 
Few such memories they bare. 

No to-days like that remain : 
Joy is flavored now with pain ; 

For the best of all our crew, — 
Helmsman, gentlest passenger, — 
Lie so still they will not stir. 

Though the sea should drench them through. 

So our shallop floats no more 
Where the low, vine-tangled shore 

Dips its orange-golden fruit 
To the plashing of the wave : 
Only white flowers for a grave, 

Now our serious hands will suit. 

Still the sun shines, and we drift 
Homeward on the current swift, 

Those who went before to meet. 
All things beautiful grow sad : 
Yet even grief is sometimes glad ; — 

Shade us. Life, with bittersweet ! 



22 DIVER AND VOYAGER. 



DIVER AND VOYAGER. 

** ^ rOYAGER, hast thou ever been down 

Where thy boat gUdes now, 
To the roots of the jagged rocks that frown 
O'er a death-white brow? 

"To the wasted gems that slip away 

From the mocking wave, 
Where the shark and swordfish grimly play 

Round the sailor's grave ? " 

" No, diver, no ! but thy pearls I wear. 

As my boat sways here. 
Thou hast told of the rock in ambush, there 

Never need I steer. 

"And because I know that the traitor wave 

Must restore the dead. 
While I sail to port o'er the shipwrecked brave, 

I can feel no dread." 



DIVER AND VOYAGER. 2$ 

" Light voyager, 't is of humanity 

That I tell my tale." 
"Pale diver, that is the same bright sea 

Over which I sail." 



24 THE LEGEND OF SKADI. 



THE LEGEND OF SKADI. 

'T^HROUGH the leaves of the Edda there rustles 

^ a tale 
Of Skadi, the daughter of torrent and gale, 
Who, leaving her snow-summits, breezy and free, 
Went down to be wedded to Njord of the sea. 

Though bright was the ocean as now, in the day 

When Vanir and ^sir held nature in sway, 

Of gods though her bridegroom was reckoned the 

third. 
In Skadi's new mansion a murmur was heard. 

"O Njord, I am homesick! the gull's tiresome note, 
The moan of the breakers, the tide's endless rote, 
They hold my eyes sleepless ; I never can stay 
By the wide-staring ocean. Come, let us away ! 

"Away to my mountains, my home in the height. 
To the glens and the gorges, the summits of light ! " 



THE LEGEND OF SKADI. 2$ 

And Njord could but listen, and go with his bride; 
But there for his sea-haunts he drearily sighed. 

"O Skadi, come back to the warm, sunny surf! 
The beach-sand is smoother than frost-bitten turf; 
I like not, at midnight, the wolfs hungry howl, 
The bear's stealthy footstep, the shriek of the owl. 

" Nine sunsets, my Skadi, from sole love of thee, 
I will give to the mountains, if only for three 
With me thou wilt linger the blue wave beside ; 
The billows shall lull thee, my wild one, my 
bride ! " 

Then down the steep gorges went Skadi and Njord ; 
Like wind through the pine-woods they swept to the 

fiord, 
And back in three mornings they hurried again, 
Bearing up to the hill-tops the sigh of the main. 

So hither and thither awhile swayed the pair: 
But Njord sickened soon of the fresh inland air, 
And once, as he scented afar the salt sea, 
" No more of the mountains," he shouted, " for me ! " 

2 



26 THE LEGEND OF SKADI. 

"I am nine times too weary of cavern and cliff; 
All the pine-groves of Norway I 'd give for my skifif. 
The twilight, that buries the white, solemn hills, 
My blood like the coming of Ragnarok chills." 

" Three days and three nights are too many for me 
To waste on the ocean, O dull Njord, and thee!" — 
And Skadi has buckled her snow-sandals on, 
And back to her mountains alone she has gone. 

The red, climbing sunrise, the rosy-fringed mist, 
Stealing up from the valley, her clear cheek have 

kissed ; 
And over the hill-tops the frosty blue sky 
With the joy of its welcome rekindles her eye. 

She tightens her bowstring, she bounds from the 

rock ; 
The elves in their caverns her merry voice mock ; 
The waterfall's rush to the tarn by the crag, 
And the leap of the reindeer, behind her both lag. 

But still, as she chases the wolf and the boar. 
By sounds she is startled, like surf on the shore, 



. THE LEGEND OF SKADI. 2/ 

That surge through the forest, and whisper, and 

rave ; — 
'T is Njord, who is calling her back to the wave. 

And Njord hears a hill-note borne in on the tide, 
When soft through the sunset the lazy waves glide, 
Or tranced in the moonlight the weird water 

shines ; — 
*T is Skadi, whose singing floats down from her 

pines. 

He calls, but she leaves not her rock-ranges free ; 
She chants from her woodlands ; he stays by the 

sea : 
A wail thrills the harp-strings of heart lost to heart, 
Neither happy together, nor joyous apart. 

Of sea-god and hill-maid remains not a sign. 
Save the marriage of music in billow and pine. 
Still sound the Norse mountains, the tide in the 

fiord 
With the singing of Skadi, the echo of Njord. 



28 THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 



THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 

T PASSED it yesterday again, 

The school-house by the river, 
Where you and I were children, Jane, 

And used to glow and shiver 
In heats of June, December's frost; 

And where, in rainy weather. 
The swollen roadside brook we crossed 

So many times together. 



I felt the trickle of the rain 

From your wet ringlets dripping; 
I caught your blue eye's twinkle, Jane, 

When we were nearly slipping ; 
And thought, while you in fear and glee 

Were clinging to my shoulder, 
"O, will she trust herself to me, 

When we are ten years older?" 



THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 29 

For I was full of visions vain, — 

The boy's romantic hunger. 
You were the whole school's darling, Jane, 

And many summers younger. 
Your head a cherub's used to look, 

With sunbeams on it lying, 
Bent downward to your spelling-book, 

For long and hard words prying. 

The mountains through the window-pane 

Showered over you their glory. 
The awkward farm-boy loved you, Jane: 

You know the old, old story. 
I never watch the sunset now 

Upon those misty ranges. 
But your bright lips, and cheek, and brow. 

Gleam out of all its changes. 

I wonder if you see that chain 

On memory's dim horizon ; 
There 's not a lovelier picture, Jane, 

To rest even your sweet eyes on. 
The Haystacks each an airy tent. 

The Notch a gate of splendor ; 



30 THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 

And river, sky, and mountains blent 
In twilight radiance tender. 

I wonder, — with a flitting pain, — 

If thoughts of me returning. 
Are mingled with the mountains, Jane: 

I stifle down that yearning. — 
A rich man's wife, on you no claim 

Have I, lost dreams to rally ; 
Yet Pemigewasset sings your name 

Along its winding valley : 

And once I hoped that for us twain 

Might fall one calm life-closing; 
That Campton hills might guard us, Jane, 

In one green grave reposing. 
They say the old man's heart is rock: 

You never thought so, never ! 
And, loving you alone, I lock 

The school-house door forever! 



ELSIE IN ILLINOIS. 3 1 



ELSIE IN ILLINOIS. 

T T OME is home, no matter where ! " 
^ Sang a happy, youthful pair, 
Journeying westward, years ago, — 
As they left the April snow 
White on Massachusetts' shore ; 
Left the sea's incessant roar; 
Left the Adirondacks, piled 
Like the playthings of a child, 
On the horizon's eastern bound ; 
And, the unbroken forests found, 
Heard Niagara's sullen call, 
Hurrying to his headlong fall, 
Like a Titan in distress. 
Tearing through the wilderness. 
Rending earth apart, in hate 
Of the unpitying hounds of fate. 

Over Erie's green expanse 

Inland wild-fowl weave their dance: 



33 ELSIE IN ILLINOIS. 

Lakes on lakes, a crystal chain, 
Give the clear heaven back again ; 
Wampum strung by Manitou, 
Lightly as the beaded dew. 

Is it wave, or is it shore ? — 
Greener gleams the prairie-floor. 
West and south, one emerald ; 
Earth untenanted, unwalled. 
There, a thread of silent joy. 
Winds the grass-hid Illinois. 

Bringing comfort unawares 
Out of little daily cares. 
Here has Elsie lived a year. 
Learning well that home is dear, 
By the green breadth measureless 
Of the outside wilderness. 
So unshadowed, so immense ! 
Garden without path or fence, 
Rolling up its billowy bloom 
To her low, one-windowed room. 

Breath of prairie-flowers is sweet ; 
But the babv at her feet 



ELSIE IN ILLINOIS. 33 

Is the sweetest bud to her, 
Keeping such a pleasant stir, 
On the cabin hearth at play. 
While his father turns the hay. 
Loads the grain, or binds the stack, 
Until sunset brings him back. 

Elsie's thoughts awake must keep. 
While the baby lies asleep. 
Far Niagara haunts her ears ; 
Mississippi's rush she hears ; 
Ancient nurses twain, that croon 
For her babe their mighty tune. 
Lapped upon the prairies wild : 
He will be a wondrous child ! 

Ah ! but Elsie's thoughts will stray 
Where, a child, she used to play 
In the shadow of the pines : 
Moss and scarlet-berried vines 
Carpeted the granite ledge. 
Sloping to the brooklet's edge, 
Sweet with violets, blue and white ; 
While the dandelions, bright 

2* c 



34 ELSIE IN ILLINOIS. 

As if Night had spilt her stars, 
Shone beneath the meadow-bars. 



Could she hold her babe, to look 

In that merry, babbling brook, — 

See it picturing his eye 

As the violet's blue and shy, — 

See his dimpled fingers creep 

Where the sweet-breathed May-flowers peep 

With pale pink anemones. 

Out among the budding trees ! — 

On his soft cheek falls a tear 

For the hillside home so dear. 

At her household work she dreams ; 
And the endless prairie seems 
Like a broad, unmeaning face 
Read through in a moment's space, 
Where the smile so fixed is grown, 
Better you would like a frown. 

Elsie sighs, "We learn too late. 
Little things are more than great. 



ELSIE IN ILLINOIS. 35 



Hearts like ours must daily be 
Fed with some kind mystery, 
Hidden in a rocky nook, 
Whispered from a wayside brook, 
Flashed on unexpecting eyes. 
In a winged, swift surprise : 
Small the pleasure is to trace 
Boundlessness of commonplace." 

But the south wind, stealing in, 
Her to happier moods will win. 
In and out the little gate 
Creep wild roses delicate : 
Fragrant grasses hint a tale 
Of the blossomed intervale 
Left behind, among the hills. 
Every flower-cup mystery fills ; 
Every idle breeze goes by. 
Burdened with life's bhssful sigh. 

Elsie hums a thoughtful air; 
Spreads the table, sets a chair 
Where her husband first shall see 



36 ELSIE IN ILLINOIS. 

Baby laughing on her knee ; 
While she watches him afar, 
Coming with the evening star 
Through the prairie, through the sky, 
Each as from eternity. 



MY MOUNTAIN. 37 



MY MOUNTAIN. 

T SHUT my eyes in the snow-fall 
And dream a dream of the hills. 
The sweep of a host of mountains, 
The flash of a hundred rills, 

For a moment they crowd my vision ; 

Then, moving in troops along, 
They leave me one still mountain-picture, 

The murmur of one river's song. 

'T is the musical Pemigewasset, 
That sings to the hemlock trees 

Of the pines on the Profile Mountain, 
Of the stony Face that sees, 

Far down in the vast rock-hollows 

The waterfall of the Flume, 
The blithe cascade of the Basin, 

And the deep Pool's lonely gloom. 



38 MY MOUNTAIN. 

All night, from the cottage-window 

I can hear the river's tune; 
But the hushed air gives no answer 

Save the hemlocks' sullen rune. 

A lamb's bleat breaks through the stillness. 
And into the heart of night. — 

Afar and around, the mountains, 
Veiled watchers, expect the light. 

Then up comes the radiant morning 
To smile on their vigils grand. 

Still muffled in cloudy mantles 
Do their stately ranges stand.? 

It is not the lofty Haystacks 

Piled up by the great Notch-Gate, 

Nor the glow of the Cannon Mountain, 
That the Dawn and I await, 

To loom out of northern vapors ; 

But a shadow, a pencilled line, 
That grows to an edge of opal 

Where earth-light and heaven-light shine. 



MY MOUNTAIN. 39 

Now rose-tints bloom from the purple ; 

Now the blue climbs over the green ; 
Now, bright in its bath of sunshine, 

The whole grand Shape is seen. 

Is it one, or unnumbered summits, — 

The Vision so high, so fair. 
Hanging over the singing River 

In the magical depths of air ? 

Ask not the name of my mountain ! 

Let it rise in its grandeur lone ; 
Be it one of a mighty thousand, 

Or a thousand blent in one. 

Would a name evoke new splendor 
From its wrapping and folds of light, 

Or a line of the weird rock-writing 
Make plainer to mortal sight ? 

You have lived and learnt this marvel: 

That the holiest joy that came 
From its beautiful heaven to bless you, 
' Nor needed nor found a name. 



40 MY MOUNTAIN. 

Enough, on the brink of the river 

Looking up and away, to know 
That the Hill loves the Pemigewasset, 

And broods o'er its murmurous flow. 

Perhaps, if the Campton meadows 
Should attract your pilgrim feet 

Up the summer road to the mountains, 
You may chance my dream to meet : — 

Either mine, or one more wondrous. 

Or perhaps you will look, and say 
You behold only rocks and sunshine, 

Be it dying or birth of day. 

Though you find but the stones that build it, 
I shall see through the snow-fall still, 

Hanging over the Pemigewasset, 
My glorified, dream-crowned Hill. 



THE DISTANT MOUNTAIN-RANGE. 4I 



SONNETS 



THE DISTANT MOUNTAIN-RANGE. 

'' I ^HEY beckon from their sunset domes afar, 
Light's royal priesthood, the eternal hills : 

Though born of earth, robed of the sky they are ; 
And the anointing radiance heaven distils 
On their high brows, the air with glory fills. 

The portals of the west are opened wide ; 
And lifted up, absolved from earthly ills, 

All thoughts, a reverent throng, to worship glide. 
The hills interpret heavenly mysteries. 

The mysteries of Light, — an open book 
Of Revelation : see, its leaves unfold 
With crimson borderings, and lines of gold ! 

Where the rapt reader, though soul-deep his Icok, 

Dreams of a glory deeper than he sees. 



42 THE PRESENCE. 

II. 

THE PRESENCE. 

'' I ^HE mountain statelier lifts his blue- veiled head. 
While, drawing near, we meet him face to face. 
Here, as on holy ground, we softly tread; 

Yet, with a tender and paternal grace. 

He gives the wild flowers in his lap a place: 
They climb his sides, as fondled infants might, 

And wind around him, in a light embrace. 
Their summer drapery, pink and clinging white. 

Great hearts have largest room to bless the small ; 
Strong natures give the weaker home and rest : 
So Christ took little children to his breast. 

And, with a reverence more profound, we fall 
In the majestic presence that can give 
Truth's simplest message : " 'T is by love ye live." 



THE FAREWELL. 43 

III. 
THE FAREWELL. 

"\ T OW ends the hour's communion, near and high: 
We have heard whispers from the mountain's 
heart, 
And life henceforth is nobler. With a sigh 

Of grateful sadness, let us now depart. 

And seek our lower levels. Rills that start 
From this Hill's bosom, there reflect the sky; 

And his deep shadows greener grace impart 
To the sweet vale which doth below him lie. 

One farewell glance from far. The hills are fled! 
Hid in the folds of yon funereal cloud. 
A moment leans the Loftiest from his shroud : — 

" Our thunders cleanse the valley," lo, he saith : 
" 'T is not alone by smiles that life is fed : 

Awe fills the sanctuary of deep faith." 



44 AT WINNIPESAUKEE. 



AT WINNIPESAUKEE. 

r~\ SILENT hills across the lake, 

^^ Asleep in moonlight, or awake 

To catch the color of the sky, 

That sifts through every cloud swept b.y, — 

How beautiful ye are, in change 

Of sultry haze and storm-light strange ; 

How dream-like rest ye on the bar 

That parts the billows from the star ; 

How blend your mists with waters clear. 

Till earth floats off, and heaven seems near. 

Ye faint and fade, a pearly zone, 
The coast-line of a land unknown. 
Yet that is sunburnt Ossipee, 
Plunged knee-deep in the limpid sea : 
Somewhere among these grouping isles. 
Old White-Face from his cloud-cap smiles, 
And gray Chocorua bends his crown, 
To look on happy hamlets down ; 
And every pass and mountain-slope 
Leads out and on some human hope. 



AT WINNIPESAUKEE. 45 

Here, the great hollows of the hills, 
The glamour of the June day fills. 
Along the climbing path, the brier, 
In rose-bloom beauty beckoning higher. 
Breathes sweetly the warm uplands over ; 
And, gay with buttercups and clover, 
The slopes of meadowy freshness make 
A green foil to the sparkling lake. 

So is it with yon hills that swim 
Upon the horizon, blue and dim : 
For all the summer is not ours ; 
On other shores familiar flowers 
Find blossoming as fresh as these, 
In shade and shine and eddying breeze ; 
And scented slopes as cool and green 
To kiss of lisping ripples lean. 

So is it with the land beyond 

This earth we press with step so fond. 

Upon those faintly-outlined hills 

God's sunshine sleeps, His dew distils : 

The dear beatitudes of home 

Within the heavenly boundaries come : 

The hearts that made life's fragrance here 



46 AT WINNIPESAUKEE. 

To Eden-haunts bring added cheer; 
And all the beauty, all the good. 
Lost to our lower altitude, 
Transfigured, yet the same, are given 
Upon the mountain-heights of heaven. 

O cloud-swathed hills the flood across, 
Ye hide the mystery of our loss, 
Yet hide it but a httle while : 
Past sunlit shore and shadowy isle, 
Out to the still Lake's farther brim. 
Erelong our bark the wave shall skim. 
And what the vigor and the glow 
Our earthly-torpid souls shall know, 
When, grounding on the silver sands, 
We feel the clasp of loving hands, 
And see the walls of sapphire gleam. 
Nor tongue can tell, nor heart can dream. 

But in your rifts of wondrous light 
Wherewith these lower fields are bright. 
In every strengthening breeze that brings 
The mountain-health upon its wings. 
We own the gift of Pentecost, 
And not one hint of heaven is lost. 



CHILD AND WOMAN. 



LITTLE NANNIE. 

"PAWN-footed Nannie, 

Where have you been? 
"Chasing the sunbeams 

Into the glen ; 
Plunging through silver lakes 

After the moon ; 
Tracking o'er meadows 

The footsteps of June." 

Sunny-eyed Nannie, 

What did you see? 
"Saw the fays sewing 

Green leaves on a tree ; 
Saw the waves counting 

The eyes of the stars ; 
Saw cloud-lambs sleeping 

By sunset's red bars." 
3 



50 ' LITTLE NANNIE. 

Listening Nannie, 

What did you hear? 
"Heard the rain asking 

A rose to appear; 
Heard the woods tell 

When the wind whistled wrong ; 
Heard the stream flow 

Where the bird drinks his song." 

Nannie, dear Nannie, 

O take me with you, 
To run and to listen. 

And see as you do ! 
" Nay, nay ! you must borrow 

My ear and my eye. 
Or the beauty will vanish. 

The music will die." 



SWINGING IN THE BARN. 5 1 



SWINGING IN THE BARN. 

OWING away, 
^^ From the great cross-beam, 
Hid in heaps of clover-hay, 
Scented Hke a dream. 

Higher yet ! 
Up, -between the eaves. 
Where the gray doves cooing flit 
Through the sun-gilt leaves. 

Here we go ! 
Whistle, merry wind ! 
'T is a long day you must blow. 
Lighter hearts to find. 

Swing away ! 
Sweep the rough barn floor; 
Looking through on Arcady 
Framed in by the door! 



52 SWINGING IN THE BARN. 

One, two, three ! 
Quick! the round red sun, 
Hid behind yon twisted tree, 
Means to end the fun. 

Swing away. 
Over husks and grain ! 
Shall we ever be as gay. 
If we swing again ? 



WATCHING THE SNOW. 53 



WATCHING THE SNOW. 



o 



SNOW! flying hither, 
And hurrying thither, 
Here, there, through the air, — you never care 
whither, — 
Do you see me here sitting, 
A-knitting, a-knitting. 
And wishing myself with you breezily flitting. 
Like any wild elf? 

Lo ! light as a feather. 

The merry flakes gather 
In rifts and in drifts, glad enough of cold weather ; 

Gay throngs interlacing. 

On the slant roofs embracing. 
They slip and they fall ! down, down they are racing, 

I after them all! 

One large flake advances ; 
'T is a white steed that prances ; 
At the bits as he flits, how he foams, like my fancies I 



54 WATCHING THE SNOW. 

Up softly I sidle 
From where I sit idle, — 
I snatch, as it flies, at the gossamer bridle, — 
I am mounted, I rise! 

Away we are bounding. 

No hoof-note resounding, 
Still as light is our flight through the armies sur- 
rounding ; 

No murmur, no rustling, 

Though millions are jostling ; 
A host is in camp, but you heard neither bustling 

Nor bugle, nor tramp. 

Yet the truce-flag is lifted ; 

Unfurled it lies drifted 
Over hill, over rill, where its snow could be sifted ; 

And now I'm returning 

To parley concerning 
The beautiful cause that awakened my yearning, — 

The trouble that was. 

Ho ! ho ! a swift fairy, — 
A pearl-shallop airy ! 
I am caught, quick as thought ! fleece-muffled and hairy, 



WATCHING THE SNOW. 55 

Her grim boatman tightens 
His rough grasp, and frightens 
Me sore, as we sail to the east, where it lightens, 
On waves of the gale. 

White, dimpled, and winning, 

The fairy sits spinning. 
From her hair, floating fair, coils of cable beginning. 

Her shallop to tether 

In stress of bleak weather. 
While the boatman and I, wrapped in ermine together, 

Drift on through the sky. 

Stay ! the boat is upsetting ! 

My fairy, forgetting 
Her coil and her toil, to escape from a wetting, 

Has now the one notion : 

Below boils the ocean ! 
I scream, — I am heard, — up, in arrowy motion, 

I am borne by a bird ; — 

A gray eagle ! — over 
The seas flies the rover ; 
And I ride as his guide, a new world to discover. 



56 WATCHING THE SNOW. 

He bears me on, steady, 
Through whirlwind and eddy; 
I cling to his neck, and he ever is ready 
To pause at my beck. 

White doves through the ether 
Come flocking together: 
How they crowd to me, proud if I smooth one soft 
feather ! 
O what is the matter? 
They startle, — they scatter! 
On the wet window-pane hear my eagle's claws 
clatter ! — 
The snow 's turned to rain ! 



PRUDENCE. 57 



PRUDENCE. 

AT 7" HAT is this round world to Prudence, 

^ ^ With her round, black, restless eyes, 
But a world for knitting stockings, 
Sweeping floors, and baking pies? 

'T is a world that women work in. 
Sewing long seams, stitch by stitch : 

Barns for hay, and chests for linen ; — 
'T is a world where men grow rich. 

Ten years old is little Prudence ; 

Ten years older still she seems, 
With her busy eyes and fingers, 

With her grown-up thoughts and schemes. 

Sunset is the time for candles ; 

Cows are milked at fall of dew ; 
Beans will grow, and melons ripen. 

When the summer skies are blue. 



5 8 PRUDENCE. 

Is there more than work in living? 

Yes ; a child must go to school, 
And to meeting every Sunday; 

Not a heathen be, or fool. 

Something more has haunted Prudence 
In the song of bird and bee, 

In the low wind's dreamy whisper 
Through the light-leaved poplar-tree. 

Something lingers, bends above her. 
Leaning at the mossy well ; 

Some sweet murmur from the meadows ; 
On the air some gentle spell. 

But she will not stop to listen : — 
Maybe there are witches yet ! 

So she runs away from beauty; 
Tries its presence to forget. 

T is the way her mother taught her ; 

Prudence is not much to blame. 
Work is good for child or woman ; 

Childhood's jailer, — *t is a shame ! 



PRUDENCE. 59 

Gravely at the romping children 
Their gray heads the gossips shake; 

Saying, with a smile for Prudence, 
"What a good wife she will make!" 



60 BLUE-EYED GRACE. 



BLUE-EYED GRACE. 

'\7'0UR walk is lonely, blue-eyed Grace, 
•^ Down the long forest-road to school. 
Where shadows troop, at dismal pace, 
From sullen chasm to sunless pool. 
Are you not often, little maid. 
Beneath the sighing trees afraid? 

" Afraid ! beneath the tall, strong trees 
That bend their arms to shelter me, 

And whisper down, with dew and breeze, 
Sweet sounds that float on lovingly, 

Till every gorge and cavern seems 

Thrilled through and through with fairy dreams ? 

"Afraid, — beside the water dim. 

That holds the baby lilies white 
Upon its bosom, where a hymn 

Ripples forth softly to the light 
That now and then comes gliding in, 
A lily's budding smile to win ? 
3* 



BLUE-EYED GRACE. 6l 

"Fast to the slippery precipice 

I see the nodding harebell cling: 
In that blue eye no fear there is ; 

Its hold is firm, — the frail, free thing! 
The harebell's Guardian cares for me. 
So I am in safe company. 

" The woodbine clambers up the cliff, 
And seems to murmur, ' Little Grace, 

The sunshine were less welcome, if 
It brought not every day your face.' 

Red leaves slip down from maples high. 

And touch my cheek as they flit by. 

"I feel at home with everything 
That has its dwelling in the wood ; 

With flowers that laugh, and birds that sing ; 
Companions beautiful and good. 

Brothers and sisters everywhere ; 

And over all our Father's care. 



" In rose-time or in berry-time ; 

* 

When ripe seeds fall, or buds peep out ; 



62 BLUE-EYED GRACE. 

When green the turf, or white the rime, 

There 's something to be glad about. 
It makes my heart bound just to pass 
The sunbeams dancing on the grass. 

"And when the bare rocks shut me in 
Where not a blade of grass will grow, 

My happy fancies soon begin 
To warble music rich and low, 

And paint what eyes could never see: 

My thoughts are company for me. 

" What does it mean to be alone ? 

And how is any one afraid 
Who feels the dear God on his throne, 

Sending his sunshine through the shade. 
Warming the damp sod into bloom. 
And smiling off the thicket's gloom ? 

"At morning, down the woodpath cool, 
The fluttering leaves make cheerful talk. 

After the stifled day at school, 
I hear, along my homeward walk, 



BLUE-EYED GRACE. 6^ 

The airy wisdom of the wood, 
Far easiest to be understood ! 

" I whisper to the winds ; I kiss 

The rough old oak, and clasp his bark; 

No farewell of the thrush I miss ; 
I lift the soft veil of the dark. 

And say to bird, and breeze, and tree, 

* Good night ! good friends you are to me 1 ' " 



64 ROCK AND RILL. 



ROCK AND RILL. 

T NTO the sunshine out of shade ! " 
■^ The rill has heard the call, 
And, babbling low, her answer made, - 
A laugh, 'twixt slip and fall. 

Out from her cradle-roof of trees, 
Over the free, rough ground ! 

The peaceful blue above she sees ; 
The cheerful green around. 

A pleasant world for running streams 
To steal unnoticed through. 

At play with all the sweet sky-gleams. 
And nothing else to do ! 

A rock has stopped the silent rill, 
And taught her how to speak : 

He hinders her ; she chides him still ; 
He loves her lispings meek. 



ROCK AND RILL. 65 

And Still he will not let her go : 

But she may chide and sing, 
And o'er him liquid freshness throw. 

Amid her murmuring. 

The harebell sees herself no more 

In waters clear at play ; 
Yet never she such azure wore, 

Till wept on by the spray. 

And many a woodland violet 

Stays charmed upon the bank ; 
Her thoughtful blue eye brimming wet. 

The rock and rill to thank. 

The rill is blessing in her talk 

What half she held a wrong, — 
The happy trouble of the rock 

That makes her life a song. 



66 IN THE RAIN. 



IN THE RAIN. 



A LIGHT flashed up in her sad blue eye, 
•^"^ Like a ray through a break in the cloudy sky, 

As she leaned at the showered pane. 
"Thank Heaven! he's come!" — but the train 

shrieked "Nay!" 
And crashed o'er her dying hopes away. 
Still she waited on till the day was gone, 
Waited alone in the rain. 

Ever, now and again, the cloud-rack through 
There peeped a bud of the heavenly blue, — 

Blue, without speck or stain. 
Then the young corn shook in its jewelled mist, 
And the violets twinkled, pure amethyst ; 
And her eye grew bright with a dewy light, 

Waiting alone in the rain. 

But the soft blue flower of the sky shut up 
Behind the tempest its hollow cup ; 
The meadows were dim again: 



IN THE RAIN. 6/ 

And the warm light faded out of her eyes, 
While she paced, and gazed on the restless skies, 
While she tried to keep her wild heart asleep. 
Waiting alone in the rain. 

It streamed and poured from the shelving bank. 
It sprinkled mire on the sedges rank ; 

It beat on the springing grain. 
" Come home ! " called the horn from behind the hill : 
She heard, but she lingered and listened still. 
Still, gazing back down the iron track, 

Waited alone in the rain. 

The hours dragged by ; it was dark and late ; 
The cars rushed on with their throbbing freight, 

Screaming a laugh at her pain. 
But the west uncurtained a wide, clear space. 
And the sunset lighted a laggard face. 

And the wild, wet day stole in smiles away. 

While two hurried home in the rain. 



68 THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 



THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 

" T T OW are you so cheerful, 

•■" -'- Gentle Edith Lane! 
Be it bright or cloudy, 

Fall of dew or rain, 
In that lonely schoolhouse, 

Patiently you stay. 
Teaching simple children, 

All the livelong day." 



"Teaching simple children? 

I am simple, too : 
So we learn together 

Lessons plain as true. 
From this thumb-worn Bible, 

Full of love's best lore ; 
Or, to read another. 

Just unlatch the door. 



THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 69 

" Can I but be cheerful 

While I bid them look, 
Through the sunny pages 

Of each opening book ? — 
Showing tracks of angels, 

On the footworn sod ; 
Listening to the music 

Nature makes to God." 

" Have you then no sorrow, 

SmiHng Edith Lane ? 
Where the barberry's coral 

Rattles on the pane, 
Where, in endless yellow. 

Autumn flowers I see, 
Working for a living 

Were a woe to me." 

"Sorrow! I — a woman. 

And in years not young ? 
Of the common chalice, 

Drops are on my tongue. 
What of that } No whisper 

To my heart is lost, 



yO THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 

From the barberry-clusters, 
Sweetened by the frost ; 



"From the rooted sunshine, — 

Golden-rod in bloom, 
Lighting up the hillsides, 

For November's gloom. 
Shall I blot with weeping 

Nature's joy and grace ? 
Rather be her gladness 

Mirrored in my face. 

" ' Working for a living ' ? 

May no worse befall! 
Love is always busy ; 

God works, over all. 
Life is worth the earning, 

For its daily cheer. 
Shared with those who love me, 

In yon cottage dear. 

" If you can, fair lady. 
Go and be a drone! 



THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. ^j 

Leave me with the children, 

Dear as if my own. 
Leave me to the humming 

Of my little hive, 
Glad to earn a living, 

Glad to be alive!" 



72 GETTING ALONG. 



GETTING ALONG. 

\ T TE trudge on together, my good man and I, 

^ ^ Our steps growing slow as the years hasten by ; 
Our children are healthy, our neighbors are kind. 
And with the world round us we Ve no fault to find, 

'T is true that he sometimes will choose the worst way 
For sore feet to walk in, a weary hot day; 
But then my wise husband can scarcely go wrong, 
And, somehow or other, we're getting along. 

There are soft summer shadows beneath our home- 
trees : 
How handsome he looks, sitting there at his ease ! 
We watch the flocks coming while sunset grows dim, 
His thoughts on the cattle, and mine upon him. 

The blackbirds and thrushes come chattering near ; 
I love the thieves' music, but listen with fear: 



GETTING ALONG. 73 

He shoots the gay rogues I would pay for their 

song ; — 
We 're different, sure ; still, we 're getting along. 

He seems not to know what I eat, drink, or wear ; 
He 's trim and he 's hearty, so why should I care ? 
No harsh word from him my poor heart ever shocks : 
I would n't mind scolding, — so seldom he talks. 

Ah, well ! 't is too much that we women expect : 
He only has promised to love and protect. 
See, I lean on my husband, so silent and strong ; 
I 'm sure there 's no trouble ; — we 're getting 
along:. 



•to- 



Life isn't so bright as it was long ago. 
When he visited me amid tempest and snow; 
And would bring me a ribbon or jewel to wear. 
And sometimes a rosebud to twist in my hair: 

But when we are girls, we can all laugh and sing 
Of course, growing old, life 's a different thing ; 
My good man and I have forgot our May song, 
But still we are quietly getting along. 
4 



74 GETTING ALONG. 

'T is true I was rich ; I had treasures and land ; 
But all that he asked was my heart and my hand : 
Though people do say it, 't is what they can't prove, — 
" He married for money ; she, — poor thing ! for 
love." 

My fortune is his, and he saves me its care ; 
To make his home cheerful 's enough for my share. 
He seems always happy our broad fields among; 
And so I 'm contented : — we 're getting along. 

With stocks to look after, investments to find, 
It 's not very strange that I 'm seldom in mind : 
He can't stop to see how my time 's dragging on, — 
And oh ! would he miss me, if I should be gone ? 

Should he be called first, I must follow him fast. 
For all that's worth living for then will be past. 
But I '11 not think of losing him ; fretting is wrong, 
While we are so pleasantly getting along. 



UNWEDDED. 75 



UNWEDDED. 



TOEHOLD her there in the evening sun, 
That kindles the Indian Summer trees 
To a separate burning bush, one by one. 
Wherein the Glory Divine she sees ! 



Mate and nestHngs she never had: 
Kith and kindred have passed away ; 

Yet the sunset is not more gently glad, 

That follows her shadow, and fain would stay. 

For out of her life goes a breath of bliss. 
And a sunlike charm from her cheerful eye. 

That the cloud and the loitering breeze would miss ; 
A balm that refreshes the passer-by. 

" Did she choose it, this single life t " 
Gossip, she saith not, and who can tell } 

But many a mother, and many a wife. 

Draws a lot more lonely, we all know well. 



'j6 UNWEDDED. 

Doubtless she had her romantic dream, 
Like other maidens, in May-time sweet. 

That flushes the air with a Hngering gleam. 
And goldens the grass beneath her feet : — 

A dream unmoulded to visible form. 

That keeps the world rosy with mists of youth, 
And holds her in loyalty close and warm, 

To her fine ideal of manly truth. 

" But is she happy, a woman, alone ? " 
Gossip, alone in this crowded earth. 

With a voice to quiet its hourly moan. 
And a smile to heighten its rarer mirth ? 

There are ends more worthy than happiness: 
Who seeks it, is digging joy's grave, we know. 

The blessed are they who but live to bless ; 
She found out that mystery, long ago. 

To her motherly, sheltering atmosphere, 
The children hasten from icy homes : 

The outcast is welcome to share her cheer ; 
And the saint with a fervent beniscn comes. 



UNWEDDED. 7/ 

For the heart of woman is large as man's ; 

God gave her his orphaned world to hold, 
And whispered through her His deeper plans 

To save it alive from the outer cold. 

And here is a woman who understood 

Herself, her work, and God's will with her. 

To gather and scatter His sheaves of good, 
And was meekly thankful, though men demur. 

Would she have walked more nobly, think, 
With a man beside her, to point the way, 

Hand joining hand in the marriage-link ? 
Possibly, Yes : it is likelier. Nay. 

For all men have not wisdom and might : 
Love's eyes are tender, and blur the map ; 

And a wife will follow by faith, not sight, 
In the chosen footprint, at any hap. 

In the comfort of home who is gladder than she ? 

Yet, stirred by no murmur of "might have been," 
Her heart as a carolling bird soars free, 

With the song of each nest she has glanced within. 



78 UNWEDDED. 

Having the whole, she covets no part : 
Hers is the bliss of all blessed things. 

The tears that unto her eyelids start, 
Are those which a generous pity brings ; 

Or the sympathy of heroic faith 

With a holy purpose, achieved or lost. 

To stifle the truth is to stop her breath, 
For she rates a lie at its deadly cost. 

Her friends are good women and faithful men, 
Who seek for the True, and uphold the Right ; 

And who shall proclaim her the weaker, when 
Her very presence puts sin to flight } 

" And dreads she never the coming years ? " 

Gossip, what are the years to her ? 
All winds are fair, and the harbor nears, 

And every breeze a delight will stir. 

Transfigured under the sunset trees, 

That wreathe her with shadowy gold and red, 
She looks away to the purple seas, 

Whereon her shallop will soon be sped. 



UNWEDDED. 79 

She reads the hereafter by the here : 
A beautiful Now, and a better To Be : 

In life is all sweetness, in death no fear. — 
You waste your pity on such as she. 



80 CHRIEMHILD. 



CHRIEMHILD. 



X/'OU know the strange old Nibelungen story, 
-^ The fitful, billowy song of love and hate, — 
Of rare Chriemhild, and her rose-garden's glory 
By wrath laid desolate ? 



Glad shines that garden, with its leagues of roses, 

Midway the old time and the new between ; 
Yet not a flower its silken bar encloses, 
So sweet as the Rose-Queen. 

She walks there in the young world's radiant morning, 

Intwining hero-garlands, redly gay, 
For her twelve knights, who, armed for battle-warning, 
To watch the garden stay. 

She seeks, undaunted, its remotest edges. 

Cut from the forest's still and murky gloom. 
Where, right against weird glens and caverned ledges, 
The freshest roses bloom. 



CHKIEMHILD. 8 1 

Black shadows, in behind the beech-leaves hidden, 

That lean to clutch the sunshine's falling gold, 
And dim, deep thickets, by white glimmerings 
thridden. 

Send her no thrill of cold. 

And she can hear, by woman's fears unshaken. 
The warrior pine's long requiem on the air. 
And winds astray, that from lone hollows waken 
A wail, as of despair. 

She can pluck roses, unaware of danger. 

Since innocence keeps watch and ward within : 
To evil dreads a careless, happy stranger, 
Unvisited of sin. 

One night a dream alighted in her bower: 
A mystic falcon perched upon her hand ; 
Daring and beautiful, he curbed his power, 
As waiting her command. 

Then two fierce eagles through the azure swooping, 

Plunged into that brave bird their cruel claws, 
And snatched him from her sight, with sorrow 
drooping ; 

Ah ! bitter was the cause ! 

4* F 



82 CHRIEMHILD. 

For Siegfried was that falcon, her heart's chosen, 

Though yet in maiden thought forsworn unseen. 
An honored wife, — a widow horror-frozen, — 
So reads thy fate, sweet queen. 

Sweet queen! alas, alas! sweet queen no longer: 

In fury and in anguish ends the dream ; 
The lurid Hnes of destiny burn stronger, 
And hide her beauty's beam. 

Gaze long upon the dear, sad face before you, 

For never lovelier ladye will you see 
In dew, and balm, and freshness bending o'er you, — 
The Rose of Burgundy. 

'T is on the wall of a Bavarian palace ; ^ 
A fresco by a master-limner wrought ; 
You see Chriemhild herself, ere wasting malice 
Had all to ruin brought. 

She clings to Siegfried, holding on her finger, 

The falcon of her vision, — ominous bird ! 
While far off, where her chieftain's glances linger, 
The rush of doom is heard. 



CHRIEMHILD. 83 

Behold the nucleus of the old song's glory. 

This is the picture of Chriemhild to keep; 
For you can only finish the mad story, 
To shudder and to weep. 

Link not her name with Etzel's barbarous splendor, 
Nor the bold Nibelung race she snared to death : 
Embalm her memory, womanly and tender. 
In love's most sacred breath ! 

You happier women of these later ages, 

With white hands by her hideous guilt unsoiled, — 
Had she read forward her own history's pages. 
Like you she had recoiled. 

Who hears, in that young, rapturous inspiration, 

When every thought takes up its harp and sings. 
The undertone of demon-visitation 

Muttering beneath Love's wings ? 

Mean jealousies her queenly bosom fluttered. 

Wakening to war the monstrous brood of crime, 
Dragon with fiend, until her tale is uttered, 
A fear unto all time. 



84 CHRIEMHILD. 

Nay ; end it with this portrait of a woman, 

To whom is possible yet a perfect lot. 
When beauty once has blossomed in the human, 
Its blight remember not. 

Even blotted so, her story is immortal. 

Transfigured by her love, Chriemhild shall stand, 
Alway with Siegfried at the palace-portal. 
The dream-bird on her hand. 



LEGEND OF A VEIL. 8$ 



LEGEND OF A VEIL.2 

OEVEN hundred years ago, a pair on whom 

The accidental honor of a crown 
Had worthily fallen, in their morning hour 
Of bridal bliss, stood hand in hand, and gazed 
Into a world which love makes Eden still ; 
Leopold of Austria and his Swabian bride. 
The old baronial rampart where they stood 
Frowned down upon Vienna, that smxiled back. 
They, in the open balcony of oak, 
Sunlit and airy, saw the wide earth bloom 
Around them like one flower, as lovers will : 
And, for a while, they silently were glad. 
Then, out of his full joy, young Leopold spoke : 

"Beloved, see this beauteous realm of mine, 
Whereof thou reignest queen. How all things smile 
To welcome thy sweet looks ! How every herb 
And bough and thicket upward sends to thee 
A pleasant smell ! And He is surely pleased, 



86 LEGEND OF A VEIL. 

Who sits above the sun, and makes the world 

Blossom with gladness, — He is surely pleased 

To see us stand here happy in His sight. 

Yet not even love brings satisfying bliss : 

No joy that overflows must run to waste. 

And work awaits us in this Paradise, — 

Where thou shalt be my helpmeet ; thou, mine 

Eve! 
Rulers are gardeners only. Thou and I 
Will toil among the earth-bedraggled vines 
And frost-nipped blossoms of humanity, 
Till Hfe around looks fresh as Nature does, 
Sunned in our love, and in the smile of God. 

"Before I saw thy face, the mother of Christ 

Was ever as a light amid my thoughts, 

Charming me forth unto heroic deeds ; 

Showing the way of lowly sacrifice 

Where kingly souls with her dear Son must 

walk. 
My Agnes, from thy gentle eye distils 
A ray more luminous in its tenderness 
Through every inmost channel of resolve. 
Thy woman's soul with my man's mind shall blend, 



LEGEND OF A VEIL. 8/ 

One work, one inspiration : I shall rule 
Nobly through thee, my bride, my beautiful ! " 

As one who tunes a flute among the hills. 
And hears, entranced, the music eddying back 
In palpitating echoes through the air. 
All unaware that he awoke that joy, 
Agnes took softly up her husband's word 
In charmed unconsciousness : . 

"O beautiful life, 

beautiful world, wherein I live with thee ! 
Thanks unto God, who made thee first my friend. 
Then lover and husband. Little would it be 

To stand beside thee here, thy wife and queen. 

Were I not raised to nobler eminence, 

Lifted to share with thee both work and thought. 

Mate of thine aspirations. Friend, best friend, 

And dearest always by that name to me, 

Because the name is an immortal one, — 

Might I not look as now in thy soul's eyes. 

And feel thy love through larger and through less, 

Diffusing calm, opening new wells of joy 

That rise beyond expression, making all 

1 share with thee as sacramental food, 



SS LEGEND OF A VEIL. 

What had been left? The thought is bitter bleak: 

Dreary and gray as the Siberian wilds, 

Had spread my life. But God would still have been : 

I should have met him in the wilderness, 

Thee, afterward, perhaps, in Heaven. 

Mine own ! 
Whene'er I hear the convent vesper-bell, 
Or echo of a midnight cloister-chant, 
The manly chorals in sonorous praise 
Responding to the unseen sisters' hymn, 
I think there may be hearts like thine and mine, 
Hidden behind the nun's veil and the cowl, 
Forever separated, yet so near ! 
God listens through the screens they cannot lift ; 
The chords lost here ring full in heaven. And yet 
'T is surely better to strike all the keys 
Of this our manifold being to His praise, 
Sending through low and high, through discords 

even, 
One thrill of unison. All we have is His, 
And we ourselves ; and we will live so here, 
That in that land where are no marriages, 
We shall forever in one mansion dwell. 
Still finding Heaven in some joint work for Him. 



LEGEND OF A VEIL. 89 

Ah, what can Heaven be, and this earth so fair? 

River that waterest Eden, art thou then 

More glorious than our Danube, when the doors 

Of the East are open, and the sunshine pours 

Upon his path between the solemn hills, 

And over the green, grateful fields ? And thou, 

City of Light, aglow with jasper walls 

And gates of pearl, art thou more beautiful 

Than our Vienna, lifting up her hands 

To us from cottage-lattice, tower, and spire. 

Beckoning from her innumerable lives 

That we can bless, and shall ? 

O royal life. 
Royal to all who carry royal hearts. 
Thou shalt be benediction to our realm ! 
Let us build tabernacles here, beloved, 
On durable foundations of deep bliss. 
Upon some height let us set up a house, 
A home for holy men, to sanctify 
The memory of this, our marriage-day." 

So spake that happy bride, and upward looked 
To meet the answer of her husband's eyes. 
Bending, he lifted her white, floating veil. 



90 LEGEND OF A VEIL. 

And touched her forehead with his lips, and said 
With reverent earnestness, "We will." 

The wind, 
The only listener passing, heard their vow. 
And suddenly and lightly took the veil 
And bore it far along the orange-boughs, 
And over the rose-gardens all in bloom. 
And hid it in the green woods out of sight. 

Then Leopold sent out squires to bring it back. 

For Agnes' sake, who could not bear to lose 

One token of their married happiness ; 

But none could find it. And the cheerful years 

Passed over them like days, filled to the brim 

With princely undertakings, and perfumed 

With gratitude, which every princely heart 

Takes as a spur to steadier energy. 

And fervor of well-doing : so the vow 

Of that fair morning from their memory passed. 

Years after, as a summer twilight fell. 
Giving his flagging steed a languid rein, 
Duke Leopold let his huntsmen homeward ride 
Far out of sight before him. Through a glen 



LEGEND OF A VEIL. QI 

He loitered on, where never hoof had trod, 

Crushing the juicy bracken and crisp turf. 

All spray, and spice, and coolness ; under pines 

That lifted their green tops like minster-spires 

Into blue light above, and hid their ranks 

Of spectral stems and dimly-woven boughs 

In deeper than cathedral gloom behind. 

Out of the wood a silent rivulet stole, 

And caught the red of sunset, and then crept 

Into the shadow of the beckoning ferns. 

A bird trilled from a bush : within the wood 

Another answered ; then a hundred sang. 

The shivering sweetness through the bracken passed. 

And Leopold halted. Standing by his steed, 

Against the darkened forest, with the glow 

Of sunset fallins: on his unturned brow, 

Strange peace enthralled him ; and subdued he said, 

" This is a holy place, a holy hour : 

Here might the angels walk." 

Even while he spoke, 
He caught a glimpse of wavering whiteness swayed 
Within a dingle close at hand. Thereat 
Startled one moment, instincts of a kniirht 
In the next spurred him towards the mystery. 



92 LEGEND OF A VEIL. 

And lo, the veil of Agnes ! It had hung 
Here, in the sanctuary of the wood, 
Heaven-kept, while robber-tempests went and came, 
With the birds singing round it, and the flowers 
Filling it with perfume, from spring to spring, 
In token of a promise unfulfilled. 
Leopold was touched. Yet, thridding a blind path 
Out of the glimmering twilight of the pines, 
"Ever," he said, "I doubted if the monks 
Praised God so well as many an honest serf, 
Who earned his bread and ate it thankfully. 
They pitch their notes too high for humble folk, 
And call the common singing sacrilege. 
If peasants thank our Lord for anything, 
It is for wife, and little ones, and home, 
As I for my sweet Agnes and her babes. 
No saintly joy is this, the brethren say. 
And pity us and pray for us, and wrap 
Themselves in cloaks of sanctity, and walk 
Their shining road to heaven above our heads, — 
Pavement of gold that we must keep repaired, 
Whate'er befalls us in the thoroughfare. 
Or on the broken bridge across the chasm. 
Labor, methinks, and prayer are of one piece. 



LEGEND OF A VEIL. 93 

Nay, toil is also praise, the best, from those 
Whose fingers are more flexile than their tongues. 

" Alack ! what do I murmur to myself ? 

Agnes would grieve to overhear these thoughts. 

She likens prayers and hymns unto a stream 

Flowing amid the sandy wastes of life, 

Watering the roots of action ; nerving up 

The earnest toiler's strength ; the wine of heaven. 

Our priests sit at the guarded fountain-head, 

To keep the waters pure, and pour the wine 

For fainting pilgrims. Niggardly it were, 

Saith she, to grudge them shelter, who prepare 

A tent for us amid the wilderness. 

And Agnes is to me what all these hymns 

And chants and mighty chorals are to her, — 

A glorious lifting-up ; to heart, delight ; 

To hands, unbounded strength. I would I were 

A good King Robert'^ for her sake, to vein 

The court and camp with rills of saintly song, 

A thrill of Veni Sancte Spiritiis 

To waken underneath the satin scarfs 

And ermine mantles of my followers. 

I am but Leopold, an ungifted man. 



94 LEGEND OF A VEIL. 

Save for my ducal crown and her dear love. 
A vow is still a vow, though tardily kept. 
She shall behold a stately cloister built 
Within the glen that hid her bridal veil. 
And I will toil on, hoping yet to see 
Each hut within my realm a home like mine, 
And every peasant happy as a duke." 

So Kloster-Neuberg rose among the hills ; 
There Agnes' veil is shrined, and Leopold there 
Is worshipped as a saint. 

Good man, he sleeps 
Too soundly to be vexed by anything 
That may be said or sung above his grave. 
Perhaps he would have thought the monks misplaced 
The aureole that they set upon his brow. 
Not on his bride's. No doubt he would have asked 
To be remembered for some other work 
Than convent-building : but he could not choose ; 
He is a saint perforce. The healthier grace 
Of honorable manhood counts him naught, 
And less than naught his household happiness: 
Within the threshold laid by wedded joy. 
The very thought of it is sacrilege. 



LEGEND OF A VEIL. 95 

And yet the buried sweetness of true love 

That once hung rose-wreaths round the Austrian 

throne, 
The brethren with a deprecating sigh 
Will sometimes air, unfolding Agnes' veil. 



FROM WITHOUT. 



ENTANGLED. 



"OIRDS among the budding trees, 
"^ Blossoms on the ringing ground : 
Light from those ? or song from these ? 
Can the tangle be unwound ? 



For the bluebird's warbled note, 

Violet-odors hither flung ; 
And the violet curved her throat, 

Just as if she sat and sung. 

Dandelions dressed in gold, 

Give out echoes clear and loud, 

To the oriole's story, told 

With gay poise and gesture proud. 

And the swaying yellow-bird. 

Trilling, thrills their hollow stems. 



100 ENTANGLED. 

Until every root is stirred, 
Under their dropped diadems. 

Swallows thicken through the air, — 
Curve and drift of plumy brown, — 

Wafting, showering everywhere. 
Melody's light seed-notes down. 

Beauty, music on the earth ; 

Music, beauty in the sky; 
Guess the mystery of their birth ! 

All the haunting what and why. 

Nature weaves a marvellous braid ; 

Tints and tones how deftly blent. 
Who unwinds the web she made ? 

Thou, who wearest her wise content. 

Wrapped within her beauty's fold. 
Of her song thyself a part. 

Plainly are her secrets told 
Unto thee, O pure of heart ! 



THE RIDDLE OF BEAUTY. 10 1 



THE RIDDLE OF BEAUTY. 

13 ROWN bird of spring, on pinion soft 
^^ Ascending, 
A voice to reddening dawn aloft 
Thus lending ; 
Few heed thy song ; why is it sweet ? 
Why art thou beautiful as fleet. 

Light comer. 
Bewildered in the stir and heat 
Of summer.? 

White clouds, that over the blue sky 

Are pressing, 
The pilots of an argosy 
Of blessing ; 
Ye float with all your sails unfurled 
Above a dull, unconscious world ; 

None caring 
Whence ye those fleeces, golden-curled, 
Are bearing. 



102 THE RIDDLE OF BEAUTY. 

Blue autumn flower, thy deep heart stores 

Heaven's azure ; 
And thence from out thy chalice pours 
Rare pleasure. 
The frost a plague-spot blackening casts ; 
Thy fringe is torn when sleety blasts 
Grow stronger ; 
Men love thee while thy beauty lasts ; 
No longer. 

Thou maid, around whose lip and eye 

Intwining, 
The loveliest tints of earth and sky 
Are shining, — 
Thy sweet song dies ; thy freshness must 
Fade like a flower's, by blight and dust 
O'ertaken ; 
And all the roots of mortal trust 
Are shaken. 

O, why should thus the beautiful 

O'erbrood us. 
Yet ever its harmonious rule 

Elude us } 



THE RIDDLE OF BEAUTY. IO3 

The grave its hopeless blot may be ; 
Largess to eyes that cannot see 

'Tis giving: 
The joy, the pain, the mystery 

Of living. 

Say whence, O Beauty, floatest thou, 

And whither.? 
But in a shade, an echo now 
Swept hither. 
Born with the sounds that hurry past? 
Dead with the shapes that flee so fast } 
O, never! 
The soul of each fair thing must last 
Forever. 

The glory of the rose remains 

Unfaded, 
Though now no wreath from blossoming lanes 
Be braided. 
A word unknown she drooping said ; 
A breath was in her, from the dead 
To waft her: 
And Beauty's riddle shall be read 
Hereafter. 



104 HINTS. 



HINTS. 

O WEET Nature, speak to me ! 

*^ I have been listening so long, so long ! 
The goldfinch round the linden winds his song: 
A spangled butterfly just flew this way, 
And stopped, as if he had some word to say; 
The water-lily's leaves are half apart. 
Pale with some secret hidden in her heart. 
I hear, but yet the inner sense is sealed ; 
For me there is a mystery unrevealed : 
Sweet Nature, speak to me ! 

Dear Book of Mystery, 
Whose leaves a breeze of June is turning o'er. 
To show me one forgotten word the more. 
The living truths upon thy page are dry 
As last year's violets that beside them lie : 
The pastures green, the waters flowing still, 
The shepherds' watch on Bethlehem's moonlit 
hill, 



HINTS. 105 

Are but as tales of any common book: 
Where is the Hght by which my soul should look, 
Dear Book of Mystery? 

Love is both eye and ear. 
When like the west wind breathes my longing prayer, 
Pausing the need of humblest hearts to share, 
Then will sweet parables unfold their sense, 
And Nature speak with all her eloquence. 
Let the heart stagnate o'er its selfish dreams, 
And life a veiled and silent statue seems : 
Leaning, upon the bosom of the Lord, 
Love hears the lightest whispers of His word. 

Love is both eye and ear. 



The grace of the bending grasses, 

The flush of the dawn-lit sky. 
The scent that lingers and passes 

When the loitering wind goes by, — 
Are gushes and hints of sweetness. 

From the unseen deeps afar ; 
The foam-edge of heaven's completeness 

Swept outward through flower and star. 



I06 HINTS. 

For the cloud, and the leaf, and the blossom, 

The shadow, the flickering beam, 
Are waifs on the sea-like bosom 

Of beauty beyond our dream: 
Its glow to our earth is given ; 

It freshens this lower air: 
O, the fathomless wells of heaven, — 

The springs of the earth rise there ! 



They whose hearts are whole and strong, 

Loving holiness. 
Living clean from soil of wrong. 

Wearing truth's white dress, — 
They unto no far-off height 

Wearily need climb ; 
Heaven to them is close in sight 

From these shores of time. 

Only the anointed eye 

Sees in common things, — 
Gleams dropped daily from the sky, — 

Heavenly blossomings. 



HINTS. 107 

To the hearts where light has birth 

Nothing can be drear ; 
Budding through the bloom of earth, 

Heaven is always near. 



" Take the fruit I give you," says the bending 

tree ; 
" Nothing but a burden is it all to me. 
Lighten ye my branches : let them toss in air ! 
Only leave me freedom next year's load to bear." 

" Do my waters cheer thee," says the gurgling 

spring, 
" With the crystal coolness 't is their life to bring ? 
Leave me not to stagnate, creeping o'er the plain ; 
Drink for thy refreshment ; drink, and come again ! " 

" Can I yield you blessings ? " says the friendly 
heart. 

* Fear not I am poorer, though I much impart. 

Wherefore should you thank me ? giving is my 
need. 

Love that wrought none comfort sorrow were in- 
deed." 



I08 HINTS. 



The curtain of the dark 
Is pierced by many a rent : 

Out of the star-wells, spark on spark 
Trickles through night's torn tent. 

Grief is a tattered tent 

Wherethrough God's light doth shine. 
Who glances up, at every rent 

Shall catch a ray divine. 



Thou mayst not rest in any lovely thing, 

Thou, who wert formed to seek and to aspire ; 

For no fulfilment of thy dreams can bring 
The answer to thy measureless desire. 

The beauty of the round, green world is not 
Of the world's essence ; far within the sky 

The tints which make this bubble bright are 
wrought : 
The bubble bursts ; the light can never die. 



HINTS. 109 

Thou canst not make a pillow for thy head 

Of anything so brittle and so frail ; 
Yet mayst thou by its transient glow be led 

Into the heaven where sun and star grow pale ; 

Where, out of burning whiteness, flows the light ; 

Light, which is but the visible stream of love ; — 
Hope's ladder, brightening upward through the 
night, 

Whereon our feet grow winged as they move. 

Let beauty sink in light ; in central deeps 
Of love unseen, let dearest eyes grow dim : 

They draw us after, up the infinite steeps 
Where souls familiar track the seraphim. 



no THE DEATH OF JUNE. 



THE DEATH OF JUNE. 

JUNE falls asleep upon her bier of flowers : 
In vain are dewdrops sprinkled over her ; 
In vain would fond winds fan her back to life. 
Her hours are numbered on the floral dial ; 
Astrsea's scales have weighed her minutes out, 
Poised on the Zodiac ; and the Northern Crown 
Hangs sparkling in the Zenith just at eve, 
To show a queen is passing. See where stands, 
Pausing on tiptoe, with full, flushing lips. 
And outstretched arms, her sister, bright July, 
Eager to kiss the blossoms, that will fade 
If her hot breath but touch them. 

June is dead. 
Dead, without dread or pain, her gayest wreaths 
Twined with her own hands for her funeral. 
At first she smiled upon us, garlanded 
With columbines and azure lupine-buds ; 
But now we find a few pale roses, dropped 
In her last dreamy loitering through the fields, 



THE DEATH OF JUNE. Ill 

Or see her wild geraniums by the brook ; 
Her laurels and azalias in the woods. 
These gather we as keepsakes of dear June, 
Though not unmindful of the humbler flowers 
That thought it joy to bloom around her feet; — 
The buttercups and blue-eyed-grass that peeped 
Under the wayside bars at travellers ; 
Prunella lingering in the wagon's track ; 
The evening primrose, glimmering like a star 
When the sun set ; and the prim mullein too, 
Folded in flannels from the eastern winds. 
Damp dews, and reckless songs of bob-o'-links. 

A warmer reign begins, and they must fade 

Beneath its splendor; even these richer blooms, — 

Orchis and Arethusa quaintly robed, 

And harebells nodding to blue skies and streams, 

And white pond-lilies, scarcely opening 

[n time to catch the farewell look of June ; 

But the midsummer air is balmy yet. 

With the sweet, lingering breath of flowers that 

died, 
And left their fragrance for a legacy 
To weary dusty days they never saw. 



112 THE DEATH OF JUNE. 

Nature has meanings for the wise to guess. 
The grass springs up hke good thoughts in a soul 
That loves and blesses all things, high and low. 
The rose breathes out a passion and a beauty- 
Far sweeter than her bloom. And God sends man, 
When he approaches heaven with lofty words, 
To the green cloisters, where, from whitest calm, 
The lily of the valley's incense-cloud 
Ascends to Him like an unspoken prayer. 
The universe is one great, loving thought, 
Written in hieroglyphs of bud and bloom ; 
And we in human faces, human forms, 
Not overgrown or ruinous with sin. 
The same inspiring characters may read ; 
May feel sweet emanations from the life 
Of one whose soul is closely knit with God's, 
As if the gates of balmy Paradise 
Again swung open to this outcast world. 

Creator, Father! Thou art nature's wealth. 
Suns, blossoms, insects, worlds, and souls of men, 
Draw life's deep joy from Thee, their treasury. 
Oft, like a beggar suddenly made rich, 
I sink beneath the overpowering sense 



THE DEATH OF JUNE. 1 13 

Of Thee in all things. Sometimes 't is the moon, 
Orbed like an Eye dilating with calm love, 
That drowns me in pale, silent waves of light ; 
Sometimes it is the mighty, shadowing hills, 
That crush me with a greatness not their own: 
Or stars burn glory through me, living coals 
On the heaped altar of the universe. 

But whispers oftener, borne from common things, 

Waken a subtle faculty within, 

A sense of deeper beauty yet unbreathed : 

As Asgard's warder at the rainbow-bridge 

Sat listening through all seasons, and could hear 

The grass grow leagues away, — so comes to me 

A golden gladness, with keen, delicate edge 

Piercing the films that wrap the inner sense. 

Making it joy to think of swelling buds. 

And fruit slow-ripening on the apple-trees, 

And young birds fledging in the robin's nest : 

By every outward sluice runs through my soul. 

And overflows its brim, the thought of Thee ! 

But the swift memory of man and sin 
Returns, and drains away my happiness. 



114 THE DEATH OF JUNE. 

O God ! that man were good ! That he would not 
Make himself pestilent by brooding long 
O'er evil thoughts and deeds, — a wind that lurks 
For poisons in the marsh : — that he were true 
And loving, like all natural things, that grow 
Best in the sunshine, drawing from Thy light 
Their joy, their strength from working Thy firm 

will ! 
Then were this human life a summer breeze 
Freshening the earth with balmy draughts of bloom ; 
And death were but subsiding into heaven, 
As June flowers softly fade upon the light 
Of brighter noons, yet leave their breath behind. 



THE INDIAN SUMMER. II 5 



THE INDIAN SUMMER. 



T 



IS the time 
When the chime 
Of the seasons' choral band is ringing out. 

Smoky brightness fills the air, 

For the light winds everywhere 
Censers full of flowery embers swing about. 

There is sweetness that oppresses, 

As a tender parting blesses; 

There *s a softened glow of beauty, 

As when Love is wreathing Duty; 

There are melodies that seem 
Weaving past and future into one fair dream. 

To her bier 
Comes the year 
Not with weeping and distress, as mortals do; 
But, to guide her way to it. 
All the trees have torches lit ; 
Blazing red the maples shine the woodlands through ; 



Il6 THE INDIAN SUMMER. 

Gay witch-hazels in the river 
Watch their own bright tapers quiver; 
Flickering burn the birches yellow 
Through the walnuts brown and mellow; 
Dark, sad pines stand breathless by, 
Mourners sole, and mourning that they cannot die 



Through the trees 
Tolls the breeze. 
Tolls, then rings a merry peal, and tolls again. 

Dead leaves, shaken by the sound. 

Slowly float and drop around. 
So does memory lull or echo thoughts of pain. 

Dead leaves lie upon earth's bosom. 

Side by side with many a blossom ; 

Gentians, fringed with azure glory, — 

Sky-flakes, dropped on meadows hoary ; 

Asters, thick and bright as sparks 
Struck by seraph oarsmen from their starry barks 

O, to die 
When the sky 
Smiles behind the Indian Summer's hazy veil ! 



THE INDIAN SUMMER. 11/ 

Thus to glorify decay, 

Going in life's best array, 
Unto groves where death is a forgotten tale. 

Falls a sorrow on the spirit? 

Heavenly hopes are springing near it. 

Earth, a happy child, rejoices. 

Keeping time with angel voices. 

When such autumn days are done, 
There 's a crown behind thy rays, thou setting 

sun ! 



Il8 WOULD YOU ? 



WOULD YOU? 

i^~^OULD you keep the tints of spring 
^^ On the woods in misty brightness ; 
Keep the half-veiled boughs a-swing 

To the linnet's flitting lightness ; 
Through the birch leaves' rippling green 

Hold the maple-keys from dropping ; 
On the sward with May-showers clean, 

Cheat the violets into stopping; 

Could you make the rosebud's lips 

Vow to be a bud forever ; 
From the sedges' wavering tips, 

Bid the pendent dewdrop never ; 
Could you make the sunrise hour 
For a lifetime overbrood you ; 
Could you change the year's full dower 

For its first faint promise, — would you ? 

Though joy beads the cup we quaff, 
Bubbling from the fount of morning, 



WOULD YOU ? 119 

When the world is all a laugh, 

And a welcome without warning ; 
At life's Cana-feast, the guest, 

Lingering on with thirst unsated, 
Finds a later draught the best : 

Miracles, — when thou hast waited ! 

Thought must shade and sun the soul 

With its glorious mutations; 
Every life-song is a whole 

Sweeter for its variations. 
Wherefore with your bliss at strife ? 

'T was an angel that withstood you. 
Could you change your perfect life 

For a dream of living, — would you ? 



120 BETTER. 



T 



BETTER. 

HAT haunting dream of Better, 
Forever at our side ! 
It tints the far horizon, 

It sparkles on the tide. 
The cradle of the Present 

Too narrow is for rest : 
The feet of the Immortal 

Leap forth to seek the Best. 

O beauty, trailing sadness ! 

Despair, hope's loftiest birth ! 
With tears and aspirations 

Have ye bedewed the earth. 
The opening buds of April 

Untimely frost may chill ; 
The soul of sweet October 

Faints out in mystery still. 

What buriest thou, gay childhood ? 
Swift youth, what fled with thee ? 



BETTER. 121 

Laugh'st at our losses, Sorrow, 

As in some godlike glee ? 
Away, away forever 

Our vessels seem to sail : 
The Eternal Breath o'ertakes them ; 

Home speeds them every gale. 

The filmy gold and purple 

Swathed not the hills we trod : 
*Twas hard and common climbing, 

The bramble and the clod. 
The bitterness we tasted 

Was Truth's most wholesome leaven : 
The friends that left us lonely 

Are opening doors in heaven. 

And now the deeper midnight 

Uncovers larger stars ; 
And grafts of glory bourgeon 

From earthly blights and scars. 
And now the mists are lifting — 

The tides are rushing in — 
*T is sunrise on the mountains ! — 

Lo ! life is yet to win ! 
6 



122 THE ROSE ENTHRONED. 



THE ROSE ENTHRONED. 

TT melts and seethes, the chaos that shall grow 

To adamant beneath the house of life ; 
In hissing hatred atoms clash, and go 
To meet intenser strife. 

And ere that fever leaves the granite veins, 

Down thunders over them a torrid sea : 
Now Flood, now Fire, alternate despot reigns, 
Immortal foes to be. 

Built by the warring elements, they rise. 

The massive earth-foundations, tier on tier. 
Where slimy monsters with unhuman eyes 
Their hideous heads uprear. 

The building of the world is not for you. 

That glare upon each other, and devour : 
Race floating after race fades out of view. 
Till beauty springs from power. 



THE ROSE ENTHRONED. 123 

Meanwhile from crumbling rocks and shoals of death 

Shoots up rank verdure to the hidden sun ; 
The gulfs are eddying to the vague, sweet breath 
Of richer life begun ; 

Richer and sweeter far than aught before, 

Though rooted in the grave of what has been : 
Unnumbered burials yet must heap Earth's floor 
Ere she her heir shall win ; 

And ever 'nobler lives and deaths more grand, 
For nourishment of that which is to come ; 
While mid the ruins of the work she planned 
Sits Nature, blind and dumb. 

For whom or what she plans, she knows no more 

Than any mother of her unborn child : 
Yet beautiful forewarnings murmur o'er 
Her desolations wild. 

Slowly the clamor and the clash subside ; 

Earth's restlessness her patient hopes subdue ; 
Mild oceans shoreward heave a pulse-like tide ; 
The skies are veined with blue. 



124 THE ROSE ENTHRONED. 

And life works through the growing quietness, 

To bring some darling mystery into form : 
Beauty her fairest Possible would dress 
In colors pure and warm. 

Within the depths of palpitating seas 

A tender tint, — anon a. line of grace, 
Some lovely thought from its dull atom frees, 
The coming joy to trace: — 

A pencilled moss on tablets of the sand, 

Such as shall veil the unbudded maiden-blush 
Of beauty yet to gladden the green land ; — 
A breathing, through the hush. 

Of some sealed perfume longing to burst out. 
And give its prisoned rapture to the air ; — 
A brooding hope, a promise through a doubt, 
Is whispered everywhere. 

And, every dawn a shade more clear, the skies 
A flush as from the heart of heaven disclose : 
Through earth and sea and air a message flies, 
Prophetic of the Rose. 



THE ROSE ENTHRONED. 125 

At last a morning comes, of sunshine still, 

When not a dewdrop trembles on the grass, 
When all winds sleep, and every pool and rill 
Is like a burnished glass 

Where a long looked-for guest might lean to gaze ; 

When Day on Earth rests royally, — a crown 
Of molten glory, flashing diamond rays. 
From heaven let lightly down. 

In golden silence, breathless, all things stand ; 
What answer waits this questioning repose ? 
A. sudden gush of light and odors bland. 

And, lo, — the Rose ! the Rose ! 

The birds break into canticles around ; 
The winds lift Jubilate to the skies ; 
For, twin-born with the rose on Eden-ground, 
Love blooms in human eyes. 

Life's marvellous queen-flower blossoms only so. 

In dust of low ideals rooted fast. 
Ever the Beautiful is moulded slow 
From truth in errors past. 



126 THE ROSE ENTHRONED. 

What fiery fields of Chaos must be won, 

What battling Titans rear themselves a tomb, 
What births and resurrections greet the sun 
Before the rose can bloom ! 

And of some wonder-blossom yet we dream 

Whereof the time that is infolds the seed ; 
Some flower of light, to which the Rose shall seem 
A fair and fragile weed. 



WAR-M EMORIES 



THE NINETEENTH OF APRIL. 

[1861.] 

npHIS year, till late in April, the snow fell thick 

and light : 
Thy flag of truce, kind Nature, in clinging drifts of 

white. 
Hung over field and city : — now everywhere is 

seen. 
In place of that white quietness, a sudden glow of 

green. 

The verdure climbs the Common, beneath the leaf- 
less trees. 

To where the glorious Stars and Stripes are float- 
ing on the breeze. 

There, suddenly as Spring awoke from Winter's 
snow-draped gloom, 

The Passion-Flower of Seventy-Six is bursting into 
bloom. 

6* I 



130 THE NINETEENTH OF APRIL. 

Dear is the time of roses, when earth to joy is 

wed, 
And garden-plat and meadow wear one generous 

flush of red ; 
But now in dearer beauty, to her ancient colors true, 
Blooms the old town of Boston in red and white and 

blue. 

Along the whole awakening North are those bright 

emblems spread ; 
A summer noon of patriotism is burning overhead. 
No party badges flaunting now, — no word of clique 

or clan ; 
But " Up for God and Union ! " is the shout of 

every man. 

O, peace is dear to Northern hearts ; our hard- 
earned homes more dear ; 

But Freedom is beyond the price of any earthly 
cheer ; 

And Freedom's flag is sacred ; — he who would 
work it harm, 

Let him, although a brother, beware our strong 
right arm ! 



THE NINETEENTH OF APRIL. I3I 

A brother ! ah, the sorrow, the anguish of that word ! 
The fratricidal strife begun, when will its end be 

heard ? 
Not this the boon that patriot hearts have prayed 

and waited for ; — 
We loved them, and we longed for peace : but they 

would have it war. 

Yes ; war ! on this memorial day, the day of Lex- 
ington, 

A lightning-thrill along the wires from heart to 
heart has run. 

Brave men we gazed on yesterday, to-day for us have 
bled: 

Again is Massachusetts blood the first for freedom shed. 

To war, — and with our brethren, then, — if only 

this can be ! 
Life hangs as nothing in the scale against dear 

Liberty ! 
Though hearts be torn asunder, for Freedom we 

will fight : 
Our blood may seal the victory, but God will shield 

the Right! 



132 THE SINKING OF THE MERRIMACK. 



THE SINKING OF THE MERRIMACK. 

[May, 1862.] 

^~^ ONE down in the flood, and gone out in the 

^ flame! 

What else could she do, with her fair Northern 

name ? 
Her font was a river whose last drop is free : 
That river ran boiling with wrath to the sea, 
To hear of her baptismal blessing profaned, — 
A name that was Freedom's, by treachery stained. 

*T was the voice of our free Northern mountains 

that broke 
In the sound of her guns, from her stout ribs of 

oak : 
'T was the might of the free Northern hand you 

could feel 
In her sweep and her moulding, from topmast to 

keel : 



THE SINKING OF THE MERRIMACK. 1 33 

When they made her speak treason (does Hell know 

of worse ? ) 
How her strong timbers shook with the shame of 

her curse ! 

Let her go ! Should a deck so polluted again 
Ever ring to the tread of our true Northern men ? 
Let the suicide-ship thunder forth, to the air 
And the sea she has blotted, her groan of despair ! 
Let her last heat of anguish throb out into flame, 
Then sink them together, — the ship and the name! 



134 WEAVING. 



WEAVING. 

A LL day she stands before her loom ; 
The flying shuttles come and go : 
By grassy fields, and trees in bloom, 

She sees the winding river flow. 
And fancy's shuttle flieth wide, 
And faster than the waters glide. 

Is she entangled in her dreams. 
Like that fair weaver of Shalott, 

Who left her mystic mirror's gleams, 
To gaze on light Sir Lancelot ? 

Her heart, a mirror sadly true, 

Brings gloomier visions into view. 

" I weave, and weave, the livelong day : 
The woof is strong, the warp is good : 

I weave, to be my mother's stay ; 
I weave, to win my daily food : 

But ever as I weave," saith she, 

" The world of women haunteth me. 



WEAVING. 135 

" The river glides along, one thread 

In nature's mesh, so beautiful ! 
The stars are woven in ; the red 

Of sunrise ; and the rain-cloud dull. 
Each seems a separate wonder wrought ; 
Each blends with some more wondrous thought. 

" So, at the loom of life, we weave 
Our separate shreds, that varying fall, 

Some stained, some fair ; and, passing, leave 
To God the gathering up of all, 

In that full pattern, wherein man 

Works blindly out the eternal plan. 

"In his vast work, for good or ill, 
The undone and the done he blends. 

With whatsoever woof we fill, 

To our weak hands His might He lends, 

And gives the threads beneath His eye 

The texture of eternity. 

"Wind on, by willow and by pine. 
Thou blue, untroubled Merrimack ! 



136 WEAVING. 

Afar, by sunnier streams than thine, 

My sisters toil, with foreheads black ; 
And water with their blood this root, 
Whereof we gather bounteous fruit. 

" There be sad women, sick and poor ; 

And those who walk in garments soiled : 
Their shame, their sorrow, I endure ; 

By their defect my hope is foiled : 
The blot they bear is on my name ; 
Who sins, and I am not to blame ? 

"And how much of your wrong is mine, 
Dark women slaving at the South ? 

Of your stolen grapes I quaff the wine ; 
The bread you starve for fills my mouth: 

The beam unwinds, but every thread 

With blood of strangled souls is red. 

"If this be so, we win and wear 
A Nessus-robe of poisoned cloth ; 

Or weave them shrouds they may not wear, 
Fathers and brothers falling both 



WEAVING. 137 

On ghastly, death-sown fields, that lie 
Beneath the tearless Southern sky. 

" Alas ! the weft has lost its white. 

It grows a hideous tapestry, 
That pictures war's abhorrent sight : — 

Unroll not, web of destiny ! 
Be the dark volume left unread, — 
The tale untold, — the curse unsaid ! " 

So up and down before her loom 

She paces on, and to and fro. 
Till sunset fills the dusty room. 

And makes the water redly glow, 
As if the Merrimack's calm flood 
Were changed into a stream of blood. 

Too soon fulfilled, and all too true 

The words she murmured as she wrought ! 

But, weary weaver, not to you 

Alone was war's stern message brought : 

" Woman ! " it knelled from heart to heart, 

" Thy sister's keeper know thou art ! " 



133 WAITING FOR NEWS. 



WAITING FOR NEWS. 

[July 4, 1863. J 

A T the corner of the lane, 
^ Where we stood this time last year, 
Droops and waves the ripening grain ; 
Sounds the meadow-lark's refrain, 
Just as sad and clear. 

Cornel-trees let blossoms fall 

In a white shower at my feet; 
Thick viburnums hide the wall ; 
And behind, the bush-bird's call 
Bubbles, summery-sweet. 

Now, as then, o'er purple blooms 

Veiled by meadow-grasses rare ; 
Bubbles through the coppice glooms ; 
Joins the sweetbrier's late perfumes 
Wandering through the air. 



WAITING FOR NEWS. 139 

All returns ; — your word, your look, 

As we stood where now I stand : — 
With a dread I could not brook, 
Well I knew my faint voice shook, 
While you held my hand. 

Firm you always were, and then 

High resolve had made you strong. 
Could I bid you linger, when 
Freedom called aloud for men 
To requite her wrong ? 

Southrons threw their gauntlet-lie 
In the face of God and Truth. 
*' Go, for love's sake ! " was my cry ; 
"Were not Truth more dear than I, 
Thou wert naught, in sooth ! " 

And you went. The whole year through, 

I have felt war's thunder-quake 
Rend me hour by hour anew : 
Yet I would not call for you. 

Though my heart should break. 



I40 WAITING FOR NEWS. 

Only, standing here to-day, 

With the sweetbrier's wandering breath, 
And the smell of new-mown hay 
In the air, "This life," I say, 

"Strikes deep root in death." 

Death ! while here I pass the hours, 

Blood is rising round your feet : 
I sit ankle-deep in flowers : 
On you, red shot falls in showers. 
Through the battle-heat. 

What if there I saw you lie, 

Where the grasses nod and blow. 
With your forehead to the sky. 
And your wounds — O God ! that I, -— 
That I bade you go ! 

Yet, were that to say once more, 
" Go," I 'd say, " at any cost ! " 
Many a heart has bled before. 
God his heroes will restore ; 
No great soul is lost 



WAITING FOR NEWS. * I4I 

And the strife that rages so 

Burns out meanness from the land. 
Men must fall, and blood must flow, 
That our Plants of Honor grow 
Unto stature grand. 

Ay, to-day it seems to me, 

That yon httle straggling rose 
Fed by War's red springs must be : 
All of fair and good I see, 
Out of anguish grows. 

Vines that shade the cottage-home ; 
Laurels for the warrior's wreath ; 
Lilies of white peace, that bloom 
After battle's lurid gloom ; — 
All are nursed by death. 

By our bond, I 'm close to-day 

As your sword is, to your side. 
If your breath stops in the fray, 
Watchers from above will say. 
Two for freedom died. 



142 WAITING FOR NEWS. 

Still I loiter in the lane, — 

If I might but send you, dear, 
Sweetbrier scents, the lark's refrain. 
They would soothe the battle-pain ; 
You should feel me near: 

And the fresh thought of these fields 

With new strength would nerve your arm. 
Fearlessly his sword he wields, 
Whose whole risk is what it shields,— 
Home-love, pure and warm. 

And you ventured this ; you gave 

Freely all your wealth of life. 
That the Stars and Stripes might wave 
Nevermore above a slave. 
Cheerfully your wife 

Climbs with you great Freedom's pyre, — 

Not as Hindoo widows die. 
We to life in Life aspire : 
Love's last height is our desire ; 
Lo ! we tread the sky ! 



WAITING FOR NEWS. I43 

Treading with a joyful scorn 

Selfish joy beneath our feet : 
In a nation's hope new-born, 
In a free world's radiant morn, 
Breathing bliss complete. 

Hark ! a jubilee of bells 

Pealing through the sunset light, 
Shaking out fresh clover-smells ! 
Parting day to-morrow tells. 
Victory 's in sight. 

Hark, again ! the long, shrill blast 

Eager throngs are waiting for. 
Is it Death's train, sweeping past ? 
Homeward, Heart ! Pain cannot last. 
What news from the war ? 



144 A LOYAL WOMAN S NO. 



A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO. 

XT O ! is my answer from this cold, bleak ridge, 
^ ^ Down to your valley : you may rest you there . 
The gulf is wide, and none can build a bridge 
That your gross weight would safely hither bear. 

Pity me, if you will. I look at you 

With something that is kinder far than scorn, 

And think, " Ah, well ! I might have grovelled, too ; 
I might have walked there, fettered and for- 
sworn." 

I am of nature weak as others are ; 

I might have chosen comfortable ways ; 
Once from these heights I shrank, beheld afar, 

In the soft lap of quiet, easy days. 

I might, — I will not hide it, — once I might 
Have lost, in the warm whirlpools of your voice, 

The sense of Evil, the stern cry of Right ; 
But Truth has steered me free, and I rejoice. 



A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO. I45 

Not with the triumph that looks back to jeer 
At the poor herd that call their misery bliss ; 

But as a mortal speaks when God is near, 
I drop you down my answer : it is this : 

I am not yours, because you prize in me 
What is the lowest in my own esteem : 

Only my flowery levels can you see, 

Nor of my heaven-smit summits do you dream. 

I am not yours, because you love yourself: 
Your heart has scarcely room for me beside. 

I will not be shut in with name and pelf; 
I spurn the shelter of your narrow pride ! 

Not yours, — because you are not man enough 
To grasp your country's measure of a man. 

If such as you, when Freedom's ways are rough. 
Cannot walk in them, learn that women can ! 

Not yours, — because, in this the nation's need. 
You stoop to bend her losses to your gain. 

And do not feel the meanness of your deed ; — 
I touch no palm defiled with such a stain ! 
7 J 



146 A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO. 

Whether man's thought can find too lofty steeps 
For woman's scaling, care not I to know ; 

But when he falters by her side, or creeps, 
She must not clog her soul with him to go. 

Who weds me must at least with equal pace 
Sometimes move with me at my being's height: 

To follow him to his superior place. 

His rarer atmosphere, were keen delight. 

You lure me to the valley : men should call 
Up to the mountains, where the air is clear. 

Win me and help me cHmbing, if at all ! 

Beyond these peaks great harmonies I hear : — 

The morning chant of Liberty and Law ! 

The dawn pours in, to wash out Slavery's blot ; 
Fairer than aught the bright sun ever saw, 

Rises a Nation without stain or spot ! 

The men and women mated for that time 
Tread not the soothing mosses of the plain ; 

Their hands are joined in sacrifice sublime ; 
Their feet firm set in upward paths of pain. 



A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO. 1 4/ 

Sleep your thick sleep, and go your drowsy way ! 

You cannot hear the voices in the air ! 
Ignoble souls will shrivel in that day ; 

The brightness of its coming can you bear ? 

For me, I do not walk these hills alone : 

Heroes who poured their blood out for the truth, 

Women whose hearts bled, martyrs all unknown. 
Here catch the sunrise of immortal youth 

On their pale cheeks and consecrated brows : — 
It charms me not, your call to rest below. 

I press their hands, my lips pronounce their vows : 
Take my life's silence for your answer : No ! 



148 RE-ENLISTED. 



RE-ENLISTED. 

[May, 1864.] 

/^~\ DID you see him in the street, dressed up ir, 

army-blue, 
When drums and trumpets into town their storro 

of music threw, — 
A louder tune than all the winds could muster in 

the air, 
The Rebel winds, that tried so hard our flag in 

strips to tear ? 

You did n't mind him } O, you looked beyond him 
then, perhaps, 

To see the mounted officers rigged out with trooper- 
caps, 

And shiny clothes, and sashes, and epaulets and 
all ; — 

It wasn't for such things as these he heard his 
country call. 



RE-ENLISTED. 1 49 

She asked for men ; and up he spoke, my hand- 
some, hearty Sam, 

" I 11 die for the dear old Union, if she '11 take me 
as I am." 

And if a better man than he there 's mother that 
can show. 

From Maine to Minnesota, then let the nation 
know. 

You would not pick him from the rest by eagles 
or by stars, 

By straps upon his coat-sleeve, or gold or silver bars ; 

Nor a corporal's strip of worsted, but there 's some- 
thing in his face. 

And something in his even step, a-marching in his 
place. 

That could n't be improved by all the badges in 

the land : 
A patriot, and a good, strong man ; are generals 

much more grand } 
Wq rest our pride on that big heart wrapped up 

in army-blue. 
The girl he loves, Mehitabel, and I, who love him 

too. 



150 RE-ENLISTED. 

He 's never shirked a battle yet, though frightful 
risks he 's run, 

Since treason flooded Baltimore, the spring of Sixty- 
One ; 

Through blood and storm he 's held out firm, nor 
fretted once, my Sam, 

At swamps of Chickahominy, or fields of Antietam. 

Though many a time, he 's told us, when he saw 

them lying dead. 
The boys that came from Newburyport, and Lynn, 

and Marblehead, 
Stretched out upon the trampled turf, and wept on 

by the sky. 
It seemed to him the Commonwealth had drained 

her life-blood dry. 

" But then," he said, " the more 's the need the 

country has of me : 
To live and fight the war all through, what glory 

it will be ! 
The Rebel balls don't hit me ; and, mother, if they 

should, 
You '11 know I 've fallen in my place, where I have 

always stood." 



RE-ENLISTED. I 5 I 

He 's taken out his furlough, and short enough it 

seemed : 
I often tell Mehitabel he '11 think he only dreamed 
Of walking with her nights so bright you could n't 

see a star, 
And hearing the swift tide come in across the 

harbor bar. 

The Stars that shine above the Stripes, they light 
him southward now ; 

The tide of war has swept him back ; he 's made 
a solemn vow 

To build himself no home-nest till his country's 
work is done ; 

God bless the vow, and speed the work, my pa- 
triot, my son ! 

And yet it is a pretty place where his new house 
might be ; — 

An orchard-road that leads your eye straight out 
upon the sea. 

The boy not work his father's farm > it seems al- 
most a shame ; 

But any selfish plan for him he 'd never let me 
name. 



152 RE-ENLISTEDr 

He 's re -enlisted for the war, for victory or for 
death, — 

A soldier's grave, perhaps ! — the thought has half- 
way stopped my breath. 

And driven a cloud across the sun ; — my boy, it 
will not be ! 

The war will soon be over ; home again you '11 
come to me ! 

He 's re-enlisted : and I smiled to see him going, too ! 
There 's nothing that becomes him half so well as 

army-blue. 
Only a private in the ranks ! but sure I am indeed. 
If all the privates were like him, they'd scarcely 

captains need. 

And I and Massachusetts share the honor of his 

birth, — 
The grand old State ! to me the best in all the 

peopled earth ! 
I cannot hold a musket, but I have a son who can ; 
And I 'm proud for Freedom's sake to be the mother 

of a man ! 



CANTICLE DE PROFUNDIS. 153 



CANTICLE DE PROFUNDIS. 

r^ LORY to Thee, Father of all the Immortal, 

^-"^ Ever belongs : 

We bring Thee from our watch by the grave's portal 

Nothing but songs. 
Though every wave of trouble has gone o'er us, — 

Though in the fire 
We have lost treasures time cannot restore us, — 

Though all desire 
That made life beautiful fades out in sorrow; — 

Though the strange path 
Winding so lonely through the bleak to-morrow, 

No comfort hath ; — 
Though blackness gathers round us on all faces. 

And we can see 
By the red war-flash but Love's empty places ; — 

Glory to Thee ! 

For, underneath the crash and roar of battle. 
The deafening roll 



154 CANTICLE DE PROFUNDIS. 

That calls men off to butchery like cattle. 

Soul after soul, — 
Under the horrid sound of chaos seething 

In blind, hot strife. 
We feel the moving of Thy Spirit, breathing 

A better life 
Into the air of our long-sickened nation ; 

A muffled hymn ; — 
The star-sung prelude of a new creation ; — 

Suffusions dim, — 
The bursting upward of a stifled glory, 

That shall arise 
To light new pages in the world's great story 

For happier eyes. 



If upon lips too close to dead lips leaning, 

Songs be not found, 
Yet wilt Thou know our life's unuttered meaning 

In its deep ground. 
As seeds in earth, sleep sorrow-drenched praises, 

Waiting to bring 
Incense to Thee along thought's barren mazes 

When Thou send'st spring. 



CANTICLE DE PROFUNDIS. 155 

Glory to Thee ! we say, with shuddering wonder, 

While a hushed land 
Hears the stern lesson syllabled in thunder, 

That Truth is grand 
As life must be ; that neither man nor nation 

May soil thy throne 
With a soul's life-blood — horrible oblation ! — 

Nor quick be shown 
That thou wilt not be mocked by prayer whose nurses 

Were Hate and Wrong ; 
That trees so vile must drop back fruit in curses 

Bitter and strong. 

Glory to Thee, who wilt not let us smother 

Ourselves in sin ; 
Sending Pain's messengers fast on each other 

Us thence to win ! 
Praise for the scourging under which we languish, 

So torn, so sore ! 
And save us strength, if yet uncleansed by anguish. 

To welcome more. 
Life were not life to us, could they be fables, — 

Justice and Right : 
Scathe crime with lightning, till we see the tables 

Of Law burn bright ! 



156 CANTICLE DE PROFUNDIS. 

Glory to Thee, whose glory and pleasure 

Must be in good ! 
By Thee the mysteries we cannot measure 

Are understood. 
With the abysses of Thyself above us, — 

Our sins below, — 
That Thou dost look from Thy pure heaven and 
love us, 

Enough to know. 
Enough to lay our praises on Thy bosom ; 

Praises fresh-grown 
Out of our depths, dark root and open blossom. 

Up to thy throne. 
When choking tears make our Hosannas falter, 

The music free ! 
O keep clear voices singing at Thy altar, 

Glory to Thee! 



TOLLING. 157 



TOLLING. 

[April 15, 1865.] 

npOLLING, tolling, tolling! 
-^ All the bells of the land ! 
Lo ! the patriot martyr 

Taketh his journey grand ; 
Travels into the ages, 

Bearing a hope how dear! 
Into life's unknown vistas, 

Liberty's great pioneer. 

Tolling, tolling, tolling! 

Do the budded violets know 
The pain of the lingering clangor 

Shaking their bloom out so ? 
They open into strange sorrow, 

The rain of a nation's tears ; 
Into the saddest April 

Twined with the New World's years. 



158 TOLLING. 

Tolling, tolling, tolling ! 

See, they come as a cloud, — 
Hearts of a mighty people, 

Bearing his pall and shroud ! 
Lifting up, like a banner, 

Signals of loss and woe ! 
Wonder of breathless nations, 

Moveth the solemn show. 

Tolling, tolling, tolling ! 

Was it, O man beloved, — 
Was it thy funeral only, 

Over the land that moved ? — 
Veiled by that hour of anguish, 

Borne with the Rebel rout, 
Forth into utter darkness, 

Slavery's corse went out. 



THE FLAG. 1 59 



THE FLAG. 

[June 17, 1865.] 

T ET it idly droop, or sway 

— ' To the wind's light will ; 
Furl its stars, or float in day ; 

Flutter, or be still ! 
It has held its colors bright. 

Through the war-smoke dun ; 
Spotless emblem of the Right, 

Whence success was won. 

Let it droop in graceful rest 

For a passing hour, — 
Glory's banner, last and best ; 

Freedom's freshest flower ! 
Each red stripe has blazoned forth 

Gospels writ in blood ; 
Every star has sung the birth 

Of some deathless good. 

Let it droop, but not too long! 
On the eager wind 



l60 THE FLAG. 

Bid it wave, to shame the wrong, 

To inspire mankind 
With a larger human love ; 

With a truth as true 
As the heaven that broods above 

Its deep field of blue. 

In the gathering hosts of hope, 

In the march of man, 
Open for it place and scope. 

Bid it lead the van ; 
Till beneath the searching skies, 

Martyr-blood be found, 
Purer than our sacrifice, 

Crying from the ground: — 

. Till a flag with some new light 

Out of Freedom's sky, 
Kindles, through the gulfs of night. 

Glory yet more high. 
Let its glow the darkness drown ! 

Give our banner sway ; 
Till its joyful stars go down. 

In undreamed-of day ! . 



MISCELLANEOUS 



HAND IN HAND WITH ANGELS. 

T T AND in hand with angels, 
•*■ ^ Through the world we go ; 
Brighter eyes are on us 

Than we blind ones know; 
Tenderer voices cheer us 

Than we deaf will own ; 
Never, walking heavenward, 
Can we walk alone. 

Hand in hand with angels, 

In the busy street. 
By the winter hearth-fires, — 

Everywhere, — we meet. 
Though unfledged and songless. 

Birds of Paradise ; 
Heaven looks at us daily 

Out of human eyes. 



164 HAND IN HAND WITH ANGELS. 

Hand in hand with angels ; 

Oft in menial guise ; 
By the same strait pathway 

Prince and beggar rise. 
If we drop the fingers, 

Toil-imbrowned and worn, 
Then one link with heaven 

From our life is torn. 

Hand in hand with angels : 

Some are fallen, — alas ! 
Soiled wings trail pollution 

Over all they pass. 
Lift them into sunshine ! 

Bid them seek the sky! 
Weaker is your soaring. 

When they cease to fly. 

Hand in hand with angels; 

Some are out of sight, 
Leading us, unknowing, 

Into paths of light. 
Some dear hands are loosened 

From our earthly clasp, 



HAND IN HAND WITH ANGELS. 1 6$ 

Soul in soul to hold us 
With a firmer grasp. 

Hand in hand with angels, — 

'T is a twisted chain, 
Winding heavenward, earthward, 

Linking joy and pain. 
There 's a mournful jarring. 

There 's a clank of doubt. 
If a heart grows heavy. 

Or a hand 's left out. 

Hand in hand with angels 

Walking every day ; — 
How the chain may lengthen. 

None of us can say. 
But we know it reaches 

From earth's lowliest one. 
To the shining seraph, 

Throned beyond the sun. 

Hand in hand with angels ! 

Blessed so to be ! 
Helped are all the helpers ; 

Giving light, they see. 



1 66 HAND IN HAND WITH ANGELS. 

He who aids another 

Strengthens more than one ; 
X$ Jinking earth he grapples 

To the Great White Throne. 



EUREKA. 167 



EUREKA. 

T RAN through a garden of roses at morning, 

Uncaring the whither or why, 
When, sudden as hght, came a musical warning, 

ThrilHng over my heart Uke a sigh. 
" Seek ! seek ! " one low word, and there followed 
no other : — 

I gathered a white lily-bell ; 
A doveling I caught, newly left by its mother ; 

I stooped for a pebble, a shell. 
But just as a joyous "Eureka!" repUed, 
My dove flew away, and my white lily died ; 
My pebble and shell lost the light of the wave. 
And " I have not found," was the answer I gave. 

Then outward I sally, a fearless crusader, 
With "Seek" for a herald and guide. 

On Error's dominions I march, an invader; 
Green laurels the promise of Pride. 



1 68 EUREKA. 

Impatient Goliath is striding to battle ; 

My foes are but pygmies to-day ; 
" Eureka ! " I shout, while the wai-thunders rattle, — 

The victor rides forth from the fray. 
"Eureka!" why falters my tongue at. the word.? 
Chimsera yields not to a mortal's dull sword.' 
Lo, giants arise from the blood of the slain ! 
Alike were the search and the struggle in vain. 

Now bring my good staff, for the pilgrim sees yonder 

A Mecca, an altar of rest. 
Beside that calm shrine I will seat me and ponder^ 

And be in my solitude blest. 
There Peace shall bend over me, Peace, the white angel 

And Love, with her warm brooding wings. 
Eureka ! I hear it — a soothing evangel — 

'T is gentle Reflection that sings. 
Still cheated ! Ixion still grasps at a cloud. 
The white robe of Peace, — it is only a shroud ! 
My Mecca I leave ; all in vain have I sought 
The garden, the battle, the shrine ; — they are naught 

Now pausing, a wanderer restless yet weary, 
" Seek ! seek ! " how it sounds, like a moan ! 



EUREKA. 169 

Ah, where ? for around all is barren and dreary ; 

Beyond lies the dread, the unknown. 
And upward — O, joy ! what a glory is breaking ! 

Why looked I not upward before ^ 
My soul like a planet in sunlight is waking, 

To suffer eclipse nevermore. 
Eureka ! all dazzled with splendor I stand ; 
Light upward and inward, a Father at hand, 
A crown overhead that erelong I shall win ; — 
Eureka ! the Kingdom of God is within ! 



170 PSYCHE AT SCHOOL. 



PSYCHE AT SCHOOL. 



'\/'OUNG Psyche came to school, 

Down here in Being's lower vestibule, 
Where many voices unto her did call 
" Welcome ! be studious ! and in Mammon's hall 
Shalt thou cup-bearer be to Mammon-King." 

Thought Psyche, "No such thing!" 



A volume Pleasure brought, 
Of glowing pictures in earth-colors wrought. 
Temptation's alphabet in ambush lay 
Among the leaves ; but Psyche turned away. 
And said, "Those tints are mixed with poisonous paint ; 

It makes me sick and faint." 

Then one approached, called Love, 
Whose fingers o'er illumined print did move. 
Psyche looked on and sighed : " The page is vext ; 
Your notes and your translations mar the text. 



PSYCHE AT SCHOOL. I7I 

The angels write Love's idioms on the heart; 
They are not learned by art." 

Pride took an ancient book, 
To teach the high-bred air, the scornful look. 
Psyche returned her gaze with meek surprise, 
And said, "Mine are not glass, but real eyes. 
And will not stare like dead men's; since I see, 

I cannot learn of thee." 



"The child rebels," said Pride, 
" Now be the lash by some rough teacher plied.'' 
Then Poverty her rudest blows did give ; 
Said Psyche, " Pain assures me that I live. 
" My robes are torn ; but courage, faith, and love, 

My triple mail, I prove." 

Grief brought a scroll, writ o'er 
With ink of nightshade and of hellebore. 
Its damps were rainbows under Psyche's smile. 
Despair with black tome open stood the while. 
But said, " Her eyes would make the page too bright," 

And stole away from sight. 



1/2 PSYCHE AT SCHOOL. 

A guest undid the gate ; 
One who expects no welcome, soon or late. 
Then Psyche took the parchment that he bore, 
And whispered, gliding by him through the door, 
" Kind Death, best friend ! 't is my diploma given ; 

A graduate for heaven." 



GODSENDS. 17^ 



GODSENDS. 

"\TOT the windfall makes us rich, 
• But the slowly ripened fruit, 
Full of sun-warmed nectar, which 
Drops, a patient need to suit. 

Mean is every bauble brought. 

Favor of the mean to buy. 
Offer us no gift unfraught 

With the largeness of the sky. 

Offer but the breadth of love ; 

Narrower boon is none at all. 
Search for us the deeps above ; 

Not the soil where earth-worms crawl. 

Give the glory of a flower ; 

Radiant leaf-bough ; blooming thorn ; 
Light that seas and mountains shower ; 

Rosy cheer of days new-born. 



174 GODSENDS. 

God sends what the true heart brings: 

Stranger or famiUar hand, 
Priest among His holy things, 

Only bears the gift He planned. 

And the best of all He sends 
Is no measured dole, but love ; 

Is not cumbering goods, but friends ; 
Winged souls with ours to move. 

Soon we tire of pleasure's toy ; 

Flashes o'er us, while we grope, 
Glory of remoter joy ; 

Beckoning of a larger hope : 

Far as dreams, yet close at hand ; 

Worlds unveiled in one soul's bound. 
Riches of the sun-vaults grand 

At your threshold may be found. 

Learn the fools' gold to despise ; 

Coinage of heaven's mint to know 
In the home-illuming eyes ; 

In the fireside's quiet glow ; 



GODSENDS. 175 

In the roof-tree's timid bud ; 

Hues that near horizons wear ; 
Planets your own sky that stud ; 

Your own window's breath of air. 

Naught but light from loftiest star ; 

Naught than life more rare or new. 
All the real Godsends are 

Common as the daily dew. 



176 THIRTY-FIVE. 



THIRTY-FIVE. 

npHE sun hangs calm at summer's poise ; 

The earth lies bathed in shimmering noon, 
At rest from all her cheerful noise. 
With heartstrings silently in tune. 

The time, how beautiful and dear, 

When early fruits begin to blush, 
And the full leafage of the year 

Sways o'er them with a sheltering hush ! 

The clouds that fleck the warm, blue deep 

Like shoals of tinted fishes float ; 
From breathless groves the birds asleep 

Send now and then a dreaming note. 

A traveller through the noonday calm. 

Not weary, yet in love with rest. 
Glad of the air's refreshing balm, 

Stays where yon threshold waits a guest. 



THIRTY-FIVE. I// 

Her half-way house of life is this : 
She sees the road wind up from far ; 

From the soft dells of childhood's bUss, 
Where twinkles home's remembered star. 

She feels that glimmer, out of sight, — 

A tender radiance of the past. 
That drowned itself in deeper light ; 

A joy that Joy forbade to last. 

O morn of Spring ! O green, green fields ! 

Pressed by white feet of innocence ! 
The lilies that young verdure shields 

Yet send a pure, faint sweetness thence. 

Those lilies yet perfume her heart ; 

That morning lingers in her eye : 
From God's first gifts she will not part, — 

Half the sweet light she travels by. 

Yet think not she would wander back 
For childhood pure or merrier youth. 

A mist is on the fading track, 

Here rounds the brightening orb of truth. 
8* L 



I yS THIRTY-FIVE. 

Nor painless can she look behind, 
On pitfalls that she did not shun ; 

Sure paths her heart refused to find ; 
And guides that led her from the sun. 

Then good seemed false, and evil true ; 

Now out of evil blossoms good ; 
Life maps into a broader view, 

Its needed shadows understood. 

Here at the half-way house of life, 
Upon these summer highlands raised. 

Her thoughts are quieted from strife. 
Peace grows wherever she has gazed. 

The spirit of the beauteous Now 

She deeply quaffs, for future strength. 

And forward leans her shaded brow 
To scan the journey's waiting length. 

Not down-hill all the afternoon ; 

Though hides the path in many a vale. 
It upward winds to sunset soon ; 

To mountain summits far and pale. 



THIRTY-FIVE. 1 79 

Though lone those mountains seem, and cold, 

To such as know not of her Guide, 
He gently leads to Love's warm fold ; 

She sees them from their heaven-lit side. 

And of the way that lies between, 

The mystery is the loveliest thing. 
All yet a miracle has been. 

And life shall greater wonders bring. 

The soul to God's heart moving on, 

Owns but the Infinite for home ; 
Whatever with the past has gone. 

The best is always yet to come. 

'T will not be growing old, to feel 

The spirit, like a child, led on 
By unseen presences, that steal 

For earth the light of heavenly dawn. 

'T will not be terrible to bear 

Of inward pain the heaviest blow, 
Since thus the rock is smitten, where 

Fountains of strength perennial flow. 



l8o THIRTY-FIVE. 

To wait — to suffer — or to do ; 

Each key unlocks its own deep bliss; 
For every grief a comfort new ; — 

A mine for gems the heart may miss. 

Thus on she looks, with thoughts that sing 
Of happy months that follow June : 

Life were not a completed thing, 
Without its summer afternoon ; 

Without its summery autumn hours ; — 

That softened, spiritual time. 
When o'er bright woods and frost-born flowers 

The seasons ring their perfect chime. 

The time to bless and to be blest ; 

For gathering and bestowing fruit ; 
When grapes are waiting to be pressed, 

And storms have fixed the tree's firm root. 

Heaven's inmost sunshine earth has warmed ; 

Heaven's peace floods each dark mystery ; 
And all the present glows, transformed, 

In the fair light of what shall be. 



THIRTY-FIVE. l8l 

The traveller girds her to depart ; 

She turns her toward the setting sun : 
With morning's freshness in her heart, 

Her evening journey is begun. 



1 82 SLEEP-SONG. 



SLEEP-SONG. 

XT USH the homeless baby's crying, 
"^ ^ Tender Sleep ! 
Every folded violet 
May the outer storm forget. 
Those wet lids with kisses drying, 
Through them creep. 

Soothe the soul that lies thought-weary, 
Murmurous Sleep ; 
Like a hidden brooklet's song, 
Rippling gorgeous woods among, 
Tinkling down the mountains dreary, 
White and steep. 

Breathe thy balm upon the lonely. 
Gentle -Sleep ; 
As the twilight breezes bless 
With sweet scents the wilderness : 
Ah, let warm, white dove-wings only 
Round them sweep ! 



SLEEP-SONG. 183 

O'er the aged pour thy blessing, 
Holy Sleep ; 
Like a soft and ripening rain. 
Falling on the yellow grain : 
For the glare of suns oppressing. 
Pitying weep ! 

On thy still seas met together. 
Charmed Sleep ; 
Hear them swell a drowsy hymning. 
Swans to silvery music swimming, 
Floating with unruffled feather 
O'er the deep. 



1 84 so LITTLE, 



SO LITTLE. 

'^ I ^ IS little we can look for now; 

■^ The summer years are past ; 
The air is thick with coming snow, 

And dead leaves, falling fast. 
A lonelier sound is in the wind, 
For withered roses left behind. 

There was an Indian summer, sweet 
With blossoms, faint and few, 

When fruits lay ripened at our feet; 
But that has faded, too. 

Its joy was but the after-glow 

Of sunsets crimsoned long ago. 

And yet we never plucked the flowers 
That budded in our dreams: 

Even at the best, this world of ours 
Is other than it seems. 

A generous world indeed it is, — 

Most generous in its promises, 



so LITTLE. 185 

And with a golden promise still, 

It lures us travellers on 
To death's white steep, the wintry hill 

Up which our friends have gone. 
And vanished from our mortal sight, — 
Thank God ! into no starless night. 

Faint music from beyond that steep; — 

A rose-breath, far and rare : — 
So little can we guess ! — but deep 

Heart's faith is rooted there. 
So little, — and yet so much more 
Than we have hoped or dreamed before I 



1 86 THREE OLD SAWS. 



THREE OLD SAWS. 

TF the world seems cold to you, 
■^ Kindle fires to warm it ! 
Let their comfort hide from view 

Winters that deform it. 
Hearts as frozen as your own 

To that radiance gather. 
You will soon forget to moan 

" Ah I the cheerless weather 1 " 



If the world *s a wilderness, 

Go, build houses in it I 
Will it help your loneliness 

On the winds to din it.^ 
Raise a hut, however slight ; 

Weeds and brambles smother ; 
And to roof and meal invite 

Some forlorner brother. 



THREE OLD SAWS. 1 8/ 

If the world 's a vale of tears, 

Smile, till rainbows span it! 
Breathe the love that life endears, 

Clear of clouds to fan it. 
Of your gladness lend a gleam 

Unto souls that shiver; 
Show them how dark Sorrow's stream 

Blends with Hope's bright river. 



l88 A WORD WITH MY SOUL. 



A WORD WITH MY SOUL. 



OOUL, what wisdom hast thou won, 
*^^ Since thine earth-house was begun, 

From loss of precious things, 

And fair refurnishings ? 
Of all the guests that came and went, 
Leaving their calm or discontent? 

From crumblings of decay, — 

New openings unto day ? 



Wouldst thou, soul, escape thy Past? 
Life's foundation holds it fast. 

The purity, the sin, 

Alike are grounded in: 
Therefrom doth lovely leafage spring; 
Thence creepeth mould and tottering. 

Whatso lies stifled there 

Bring boldly to the air. 



A WORD WITH MY SOUL. 1 89 

Soul, no Past can shelter thee: 
Pleasant though its rooms may be, 

Opening unto earth, 

Filled with bloom and mirth. 
To-day thou dost in vain return 
To kindle fires that will not burn : 

As vainly shut its doors, 

Or veil its haunted floors. 

Soul, thou hast arisen now 
To the Present's sunnier glow: 

Thy windows are flung wide 

To light, on every side : 
Beloved comrades gather here. 
For work, and company, and cheer. 

Look in or out, and own 

How fair thy world has grown. 

Sayest thou. Soul, " Here will I live ; 
Peace enjoy, and blessings give " ? 

Tarriers of a day, 

Dear guests will not stay : 
Wild winter comes : thy vines are bare : 
Storm-beaten walls need large repair : 



IQO A WORD WITH MY SOUL. 

Night curtains thy glad room ; 
Shrouds thee in lonely gloom. 

Build up, Soul, a lofty stair; 
Build a room in healthier air. 

Here there is no rest : 

Better climbs to best. 
Thy friends shall be the eternal stars; 
They greet thee through thy casement bars 

Thy homesick feet they lead 

Where thou no house wilt need. 

Learn thou. Soul of mine, past doubt, 
Thou canst all things do without : 

All that through thy Past 

Winds and clings so fast : 
Sweet pictures hidden with a sigh, 
As far too perfect to put by ; 

And all the wealth of thought 

Into thy Present wrought. 

From that height. Soul, thou shalt see, 
In thy sky-tower, pluming thee 



A WORD WITH MY SOUL. IQI 

For unfettered flight 

Through the fields of Ught, 
The beauty of thine earthly nest, 
As never, while it gave thee rest : 

Yea, in thyself shalt find 

Joy that seemed left behind. 



192 THE WEEPING PROPHET. 



THE WEEPING PROPHET.* 

\ T rOE, woe is me for my dear country's sin! 

Woe, that a prophet's torch was given to me 
To hold up, hid God's shadowing light within, 

Before a people who refuse to see 
How guilt draws down that light in burning levin ; 
How awful is the purity of heaven. 

A boy among the hills of Anathoth 

I saw the visionary caldron seethe, 
The almond-tree its ominous blossoms wreathe, 

In token that a righteous God was wroth 
With Israel, and in judgment would condemn 
The city of His love, Jerusalem. 

To be his messenger of wrath I shrank : 
I cried, " O Lord, I am a child, so weak ! 

Who bears a curse, none give God-speed, or thank." 
Then did He touch my lips, His words I speak ; 

And, knowing that His eyes are on the truth, 

I cannot answer evil ways with ruth. 



THE AVEEPING PROPHET. 1 93 

Therefore I sit a mourner, and mine eyes 

Pour day and night their heavy sorrows down. 

My people pass me by, for they despise 

His goodness, and with scoffs His warnings drown. 

While o'er my head, in cloudy columns low, 

The birds of prey that scent their ruin go. 

Was ever any sorrow like to mine ? 

It is no selfish trouble that I weep, 
O daughter of my people, but I keep 

Vigil for thee, beneath the wrath divine, 
The love that reddens into justice, when 
God's perfect law is made the mock of men. 

For, evermore, the tables of that law. 

Broken by man, are back upon him hurled. 

O virgin daughter, thee defiled I saw, 

Wandering from Him, an outcast in the world, 

Filthy without, and vile and crushed within ; 

A by-word through the ages for thy sin. 

Alike in visions of the day and night, 
A spectral presence, not to be shut out, 

A bleeding shadov/, chased by shame and doubt, 
Hither and thither past me ta.kes its flight 
9 M 



194 THE WEEPING PROPHET. 

Into the unsheltering dark of east and west : — 
A phantom, yet in faded splendors drest. 

For thou wert beautiful, Jerusalem ! 

Celestial colors wrapped thee at thy birth ; 
Kings pressed from far to kiss thy garment's hem. 

Chosen of God, a glory in the earth ! 
Falling from such a height to such a deep, — 
To be the prophet of thy doom I weep ! 



NATURE AND THE BOOK. 1 95 



NATURE AND THE BOOK. 

T HEARD one say but now : '^ Shut up the Book ; 

For Nature tells the story better still. 
The fingered pages have a musty look ; 

The wide green margins of the mountain rill, 
The running notes of ripples on the beach, 

The open scroll of the blue firmament, 
In loftier language the same lesson teach. 

Will not the broader truth thy mind content ? 
The cover of thy book may be a door 

To shut the elder gospel out of sight. 
It tells thee only that which was before ; 

God said, ere it was writ, * Let there be light ! * 
And light is everywhere, — around, within ; 

Earth luminous with heaven : what more wilt ask ? 
The Eternal Effluence is thy next of kin : 

Lay clogs aside, and in full freedom bask." 

The Book lay open on the window-sill, 

And morning-glories leaned across the leaf 



ig6 NATURE AND THE BOOK. 

Whereon is written " Whosoever will " ; 

Also that story which hath lightened grief, 
And dried within its source the mourner's tear; 

The story of a City built of light 
Transmitted through all precious lustres clear, 

Within whose gem-walled streets shall be no night ! 

The morning-glories let the sunrise through, 

Shedding a various glow upon the Word : 
With sumptuous lines of purple, red, and blue, 

Familiar promises were underscored. 
I read and mused until my heart spoke out : 

" Nature saith ' Is,' but addeth not ' Shall be,' 
Which God hath written here past any doubt ; 

The words that human eyes ached long to see. 
We might have guessed it. Some, the saintly-strong 

And clear of insight, know that unto life. 
Which is of Him, His endless years belong. 

And are at rest from inward questioning strife. 

"But few live on the mountain-peaks of thought, 
And fewer still keep holy instinct pure : 

To sin, as unto weakness, hath He brought 

This lamp, to make the homeward pathway sure. 



NATURE AND THE BOOK. 1 9/ 

Shall we blow out our torch, because the sun 
Shone yesterday, and will to-morrow shine ? 

Too much of work remaineth to be done, 
And every gleam we toil by is divine. 

"Wherefore should He permit these flowers to bloom, 

That rays from earth's great luminary break ? 
Because to us its dazzling blaze w^ere gloom : 

Of ravelled rainbows beauty's web we make. 
Jewel and blossom, shaded leaf and star 

Give no full revelation of the light. 
Colors but letters of an alj^habet are. 

Pointing us backward to the primitive white. 
The common eye needs every tint and tone ; 

The soul of man, much more, God's faintest word. 
His glory through our mortal thought hath shone ; 

When saint or prophet speaks. He still is heard : 
And in the Revelation of the Book, — 

For surely He most brother-like hath come, — 
As in a mirror on His face we look. 

So reassured, when Nature seemeth dumb. 

"Yet will I listen to the ancient Voice, 

Forever new, that speaks in wind and wave ; 



198 NATURE AND THE BOOK. 

It is the self-same tale ; let me rejoice 

In joy that His bewildered children have. 
For they are glad in Him, the God Unknown : 

O that they knew the sacred emphasis 
The Word on Nature's loveliness has thrown, 

And how the world by Christ's face lighted is, — 
As if new sunshine brake into the air, — 

As if fresh odors burst from everything ! 
This Book is a wide window, opening fair 

Into the splendors of immortal Spring. 
Nor shall it now be shut again on earth 

Until that City, that dear Bride, descends, 
All souls resound the heavenly marriage-mirth. 

And all the blindness sin has brought us ends." 



SABBATH DAYS. 1 99 



SABBATH DAYS. 

T^HE dear old Sabbath days, 

The quiet Sabbath days of long ago ! 

Across these shadeless ways 
The upstart mornings boldly come and go. 

None lingers on our gaze, — 
No Sabbath now will shine upon us so. 

Those gentle days are gone. 
At our unworthy doors their dust off-shaken. 

No more that noiseless dawn. 
For which no other dawn could be mistaken, — 

The reverent night withdrawn, — 
Looks at us with calm eyes, till we awaken. 

If any straggler walked 
Through the hushed town, he met a spirit there, 

That with his conscience talked 
In low upbraidings, murmured through the air. 

The very wild birds flocked 
To the safe shelter of the house of prayer. 



200 SABBATH DAYS. 

The little ones, who went 
By twos, in larger footprints, up the lane, 

Paused as the shepherd bent 
Crossed the worn threshold, leaning on his cane : 

While the rich orchard-scent 
Passed in and mingled with the psalm's clear straia 

The sun, slow moving round. 
Looked from the bending heavens approval sweet. 

There was no jarring sound ; 
The hours took off the sandals from their feet, 

For earth seemed holy ground, — 
A temple where the soul her God could meet. 

But now the Sabbath sun 
Shines quick and keen, as in the hurrying week ; 

And earthly noises stun 
The spirit that would heaven in silence seek. 

The praise for hire is done, 
While their own thoughts the people think and 
speak. 

'T is true that every hour 
Is sacred to the earnest worshipper. 



SABBATH DAYS. 201 

And every humble flower 
Is Nature's text, to those who wait on her : 

But those old days had power 
The sluggish soul's Bethesda-pool to stir. 

The Sabbath day ! how well 
The Pilgrims loved it, for the peace it brought! 

We in the shadow dwell 
Of its pavilion, for our shelter wrought. 

Why break our holiest spell ? 
Why count the good old Sabbath days for naught ^ 



202 A WHITE SUNDAY. 



A WHITE SUNDAY. 

T ENTERED not the church this good Lord's Day, 

Albeit my heart was with the worshippers, 
Who stood beneath the arched and frescoed roof, 
And sang to Him arisen. The same song 
I heard innumerable happy birds 
Trilling outside my window, in the boughs, 
Among the blossoms ; — and the blossoms sang, — 
I dreamed it not, — " The Lord is risen indeed." 
Surely there never fell so pure a light 
From any crystalline cathedral-dome. 
As that borne down with the soft summer rain 
Through the pink apple-blooms, the lucid green 
Of June's uncankered leaves, and branches gray, 
Scutcheoned with lichens, tracery more antique 
Than earls or bishops bear upon their shields. 

A color not of earth, a tenderness 
Of spotless snow and rose-bloom, clothed the tree. 
That stood up underneath the heavens, one flower. 



A WHITE SUNDAY. 203 

The multitude that John saw in white robes, 
Singing the Heart Divine whose Uving drops 
Had cleansed their stains, and warmed them into life,— 
That multitude looked through my window-panes, 
And with them I joined praises. 

Friends devout, 
Who listen to the sermon, swell the hymn, 
Also the Lord accepts my offering. 
To-day I worship in the apple-boughs. 
With the great congregation of the flowers 
That come up to their heights, as came the tribes 
Of old unto Mount Zion, once a year ; 
A Passover of perfect, open praise. 

The world we live in wholly is redeemed ; 
Not man alone, but all that man holds dear: 
His orchards and his maize ; forget-me-not 
And heart's-ease in his garden ; and the wild 
Aerial blossoms of the untamed wood. 
That make its savagery so home-like ; all 
Have felt Christ's sweet love watering their roots : 
His sacrifice has won both earth and heaven. 

Nature, in all its fulness, is the Lord's. 
There are no Gentile oaks, no Pagan pines ; 



204 A WHITE SUNDAY. 

The grass beneath our feet is Christian grass ; 
The wayside weed is sacred unto Him. 
Have we not groaned together, herbs and men, 
Strugghng through stifling earth-weights unto light, 
Earnestly longing to be clothed upon 
With our high possibility of bloom ? 
And He, He is the Light, He is the Sun 
That draws us out of darkness, and transmutes 
The noisome earth-damp into heaven's own breath, 
And shapes our matted roots, we know not how, 
Into fresh leaves and strong, fruit-bearing stems ; 
Yea, makes us stand, on some consummate day, 
Abloom in white transfiguration-robes. 

We are but human plants, with power to shut 
In upon self our own impoverished lives, 
Refusing light and growth. Unthankfully 
We flaunt our blossoms in the face of heaven. 
As if they overshone the eternal Sun 
That is their inspiration ; as if we 
Sat in ourselves, and decked ourselves with flowers ; — 
An infinite littleness of vanity. 

My apple-tree, thou preachest better things ; 
Whispering from all thy multitudinous buds, 



A WHITE SUNDAY. 20$ 

"To bloom is boundless freedom. It is life 

From self enfranchised, opening every vein 

To let in glory from above, and give 

What we receive, in fragrance, color, fruit ; 

Life, which is heaven's : ourselves dead matter, else." 

Some good men say, "We need theology." 
Others, "Not so, religion is enough." 
What if both are mistaken, — and both right .'* 
God is our need, a Presence and a Life. 

Theology enthrones him in the mind, 
Yet sometimes leaves the heart as hard as stone, 
The hands as lifeless. And Religion, too, 
Is often only an ambiguous word 
For transient fervor, or for duty cold, 
Or vain, self-helpful works of charity. 

Without Him thought is soulless ; rapture blind ; 
Duty a lifelong bondage ; love, thin air. 
Through Him alone is man a living soul : 
Through Him alone is earth the bride of heaven. 

Here in Thy great world-garden, Lord, we stand : 
And Thou, whose trees we are, who art our sun, 
Hast once descended to our roots of being, 



206 A WHITE SUNDAY. 

And bloomed and breathed in our humanity, 
That we might be as Thou, and know no death. 
The Hfe we Hve is Thine, not ours. We bloom 
To gladden earth with sacrifice like Thine, 
So clad in Thy white robes of righteousness. 

Keep us ! for here the blossoms bhght so fast ! 
The fruit is flawed in turning from Thy beams 
To the biting east, to folly and to sin. 
And let all trees, the wildings of the wood. 
And grafts of rarest culture, waft Thee praise. 

My apple-tree, thy dome of rose and pearl 
Will vanish on the morrow, like a dream. 
Yet every spring, the springs when I am dead, 
A tabernacle thou wilt build for men ; 
And they will look up through thee into heaven, 
And hear the hum of bees among thy boughs, 
A faint sky-music. I shall worship then, 
With friends beloved, under other shade. 
Are only palms in Eden ? I shall miss 
The tree whereby Eve fell, — if that thou wert, — 
Not seeing it beside the River of Life. 
Thou art too beautiful to be dropped out 
Of human vision, even beatified. 



A WHITE SUNDAY. 20/ 

There is no glory of the trees like thine, 
Though there be many set in Paradise ; 
There must thou blossom also. 

Dreams are lost 
In guessing at the glory of thy boughs 
In that immortal spring-time. 

Ah ! dear friends, 
Sweet memories of the earth, and sad no more. 
Will float around us in the air of heaven, 
A fragrance and a melody, when we. 
Young, glad, and all as if at home again, 
Sit under our transplanted apple-trees. 



208 DROUGHT. 



SONNETS. 

I. 

DROUGHT. 

'npHERE is a trouble may befall the soul, 
Beside which grief will seem a happiness. 

The stream whose murmur evermore to bless 
Your desert with bewildering music stole — 
That o'er your waste of being did unroll 

\ weft of green, for beauty and for shade, 

^Lnd in the wilderness a garden made — 
Withdraws, drop after drop, its priceless dole ; 

And the sweet grasses that the wind sang through, 
And all the star-eyed blossoms, droop and die, 
Till your bare life lies open to the sky, — 

The wide, calm weariness of rainless blue, — 
Without a voice to babble its distress ; 
A barren, uncomplaining silentness. 



SPRINGS IN THE DESERT. 209 

II. 
SPRINGS IN THE DESERT. 

A ND there is joy no music can express, 
When in the empty channels of the heart 

New springs of love from unknown sources start ; 
When all the desert-land of selfishness 
That, parched and shrivelling in its own distress, 

Sent not a drop to cheer the neighboring waste, 

Breaks into song, and with o'erflowing haste 
Pours rill to rill, a suffering soil to bless. 

O silent, burning hearts ! of lonely things 
Your lot is far the mournfullest, the worst. 
But when your sands with cooling waters burst, 

Each thought in welcome of that wonder sings. 
Spring up, O well ! from God the fountain flows 
That makes the desert blossom as the rose. 



210 , THE SECRET. 



THE SECRET. 

\T 7'HAT selfishness asked for 

Was vain : 
What came for that asking 

Brought pain. 

Heaven's manna in keeping 

Was spoiled : 
All beauty self-seeking 

Hath soiled. 

Complacency blazoned 

Dull dross. 
No gain came of hoarding, 

But loss. 

Gain ! none save the giver 

Receives. 
Yet who that old gospel 

Believes } 



THE SECRET. 211 

Nor pauper nor beggar 

Then be ; 
Nor niggard of bounty 

Most free. 

But one way is Godlike, — 

To give. 
Then pour out thy heart's blood, 

And live ! 



212 " HIMSELF HE CANNOT SAVE." 



"HIMSELF HE CANNOT SAVE." 

/^ SCOFFER ! He who from the cross 
^■^^ Looked down thy dark abysm of loss, 
And knew His pain alone could win 
Such souls as thine from gulfs of sin, — 
His death-groan mournful echo gave : 
" Myself I cannot save." 

Words breathed in scorn, yet understood 
By Him to bear a sense of good : 
The secret of the glorious strife 
Between the powers of death and life, 
Love's deepest truth, — self-sacrifice, — 
Hid in that mockery lies. 

And he must understand it so 
Who would relieve a brother's woe : 
He cannot shun his own distress ; 
He hastes, with Christ-like earnestness, 
Although the way be through his grave : 
Himself he cannot save. 



"HIMSELF HE CANNOT SAVE." 2I3 

Some happy souls may pass along 
The heavenward road with smile and song, 
Through guileless infancy and youth 
Linked in with followers of the truth ; 
And their unconsciousness of ill 

But makes them lovelier still. 

Their peaceful path is not for all : 
Each must obey his separate call ; 
And he is of himself abhorred 
Who flies the summons of the Lord : 
SaiHng from danger unto ease, 

He sinks in unknown seas. 

None longs so for yon vales of peace 
As he whom war gives no release. 
But exiles' chains his brethren wear ; 
He knows no rest they may not share; 
For them all hardships he must brave : 
Himself he cannot save. 

Aye, through all pain and loneliness, 
Where men are perilled, he must press 
To rescue, crying, "Woe is me. 



214 "himself he cannot save." 

Resisting not the wrong I see ! 
If none uphold me, I must go 
Singly against the foe ! " 

And not the warrior-heart alone 
The scoffer's word for truth has known. 
The mourner, weeping out the night 
For aliens from the one true Light ; 
The watcher by the bed of pain, 

Who knows her watch in vain ; 

He who has felt his heaviest cross 
Far lighter than another's loss ; 
He who can ask and bear the blow 
That shelters any soul from woe. 
Sees why that Death on Calvary 
Life's beacon-light must be. 

Ring, mournful echo, through the world ! 
Float, banner of the Cross, unfurled 
To show the servant who would prove 
His Master's joy of suffering love. 
That, while thy folds above him wave. 
Himself he cannot save ! 



"AS STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS." 21 



"AS STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS." 

A S strangers, — glad for this good inn, 
-^^^ Where nobler wayfarers have been ; 
Yet asking but a httle rest: 
Earth may not keep her spirit-guest. 

As those whom no entangling bond 
Must draw from life and love beyond : 
Strangers to all that lures astray 
From one plain path, the homeward way. 

How must the pilgrim's load be borne ? 
With staggering limbs, and look forlorn ? 
His Guide chose all that load within • 
There's need of everything, but sin. 

So, trusting Him whose love he knows, 
Singing along the road he goes ; 
And nightly of his burden makes 
A pillow till the morning breaks. 



2l6 "AS STRANGERS AND PJLGRIMS." 

How thinks the pilgrim of his way ? 
As wanderers homesick and astray ? — 
The starlight and the dew he sees ; 
He feels the blessing of the breeze ; 

The valley-shades, how cool and still ! 
What splendor from the beetling hill ! 
He longs to go, — he loves to stay ; — 
For God is both his Home and Way. 

Strangers to sin ! beloved of God ! 
Ye track with heaven-light earth's mean sod 
For, pilgrims dear, He walks with you, 
A Guide, — but once a Pilgrim too. 



MONICA AND AUGUSTINE. 21/ 



MONICA AND AUGUSTINE. ^ 

T N the martyr Cyprian's chapel there was moan- 
■^ ing through the night ; 
Monica's low prayer stole upward till it met the 

early light. 
Till the dawn came, walking softly o'er the troubled 

sea without, 
Monica for her Augustine wept the dreary watches out. 

" Lord of all the holy martyrs I Giver of the crown 
of flame, 

Set on hoary-headed Cyprian, who to Thee child- 
hearted came ; 

Hear me for my child of promise ! Thou his erring 
way canst see ; 

Long from Thee a restless wanderer, must he go 
away from me } 

"'Tis for Thee, O God, a motner this her won- 
drous child would keep ; 

10 



2l8 MONICA AND AUGUSTINE. 

Through the ripening of his manhood Thou hast 

seen me watch and weep. 
Tangled in the mesh of Mani, groping through the 

maze of sense, 
Other, deadUer snares await him, if from me he 

wander hence. 

" Thine he shall be. Lord ; Thy promise brightens 

up my night of fears : 
Faith beholds him at Thy altar, yet baptized with 

only tears ; 
For the angel of my vision, came he not from Thy 

right hand. 
Whispering unto me, his mother, * Where thou 

standest, he shall stand ' ? 

" Saviour, Lord, whose name is Faithful, I am Thine, 

I rest on Thee ; 
And beside me in Thy kingdom I this wanderer 

shall see. 
Check the tide ! hold still the breezes ! for his soul's 

beloved sake. 
Do not let him leave me ! Keep him — keep him — 

lest my heart should break ! " 



MONICA AND AUGUSTINE. 2I9 



Man must ask, and God will answer, yet we may 
not understand. 

Knowing but our own poor language all the writ- 
ing of His hand. 

In our meagre speech we ask him, and He answers 
in His own ; 

Vast beyond our thought the blessing that we blindly 
judge is none. 

When the sun rose from the water, Monica was on 

the shore; 
Out of sight had dropped the vessel that afar 

Augustine bore. 
Home she turned, her sad heart singing underneath 

its load of care, 
" Still I know Thy name is faithful, O Thou God 

that hearest prayer ! " 



By the garden-beds of Ostia now together stand 

the twain, 
Monica and her Augustine, gazing far across the 

main, 



220 MONICA AND AUGUSTINE. 

Toward the home-land of Numidia, hiding in the 

distance dim. 
Where God parted them in sorrow, both to bring 

the nearer Him. 



And the mother's prayer is answered, for their souls 

are side by side, 
Where His peace flows in upon .them with a full 

eternal tide. 
And Augustine's thought is blending with the mur 

mur of the sea ; 
" Bless Thee, Lord, that we are restless, till we find 

our rest in Thee ! " 



And their talk, the son and mother, leaning oiil 
above the flowers. 

Is like lapse of angel-music, linking heaven's enrap- 
tured hours. 

Hushed is all the song of Nature ; hushed is care, 
and passion's din. 

In that hush they hear a welcome from the High- 
est : — " Enter in ! " 



MONICA AND AUGUSTINE. 221 

" What new mercy has befallen ? every earthly wish 

is gone," 
Monica half speaks, half muses ; " why should earthly 

life move on ? 
Ah, my son, what peace and gladness surging from 

this silence roll ! 
*T is the Eternal Deep that answers to the deep 

within my soul ! 

" Not a sigh of homesick longing moves the still- 
ness of my heart ; 

In the light of this great glory, unto God would I 
depart. 

Though more dear thou art than ever, standing at 
heaven's gate with me, 

For the sweetness of His presence I could say fare- 
well to thee." 



There 's a silent room in Ostia ; tearless mourners 

by a bed : 
Since the angels roused that sleeper, who shall weep, 

or call her dead ? 



222 MONICA AND AUGUSTINE. 

Not beside the dust beloved shall her exiled ashes lie ; 
She awaits the Resurrection underneath a Roman 

sky. 

Now Augustine in his bosom keeps the image of a 

saint, 
Whose warm tears of consecration drop on thoughts 

of sinful taint. 
In the home that knew him erring, a bewildered 

Manichee, 
Minister at Truth's high altar, him that mother-saint 

shall see. 

In the dreams of midnight, haunted by the ghosts 

of buried sins ; 
In the days of calm, the spirit, struggling through 

temptation, wins ; 
Monica looks down upon him, joy to bless, and 

gloom beguile ; 
And the world can see Augustine clearer for that 

saintly smile. 

Still the billows from Numidia seek the lovely Ro- 
man shore, 



MONICA AND AUGUSTINE. 223 

Though Augustine to his mother sailed long since 
the death-wave o'er, 

Still his word sweeps down the ages like the surg- 
ing of the sea: 

" Bless Thee, Lord, that we are restless, till we find 
our rest in Thee!" 



DEVOTIONAL 



.V ^ 



Jf 
q' 



^ 



A THANKSGIVING. 

T70R the wealth of pathless forests, 

^ Whereon no axe may fall ; 

For the v/inds that haunt the branches ; 

The young bird's timid call ; 
For the red leaves dropped like rubies 

Upon the dark green sod ; 
For the waving of the forests, 

I thank thee, O my God! 

For the sound of waters gushing 

In bubbling beads of light ; 
For the fleets of snow-white lilies 

Firm-anchored out of sight ; 
For the reeds among the eddies ; 

The crystal on the clod ; 
For the flowing of the rivers, 

I thank Thee, O my God ! 



228 A THANKSGIVING. 

For the rosebud's break of beauty 

Along the toiler's way ; 
For the violet's eye that opens 

To bless the new-born day ; 
For the bare twigs that in summer 

Bloom like the prophet's rod ; 
For the blossoming of flowers, 
I thank Thee, O my God ! 

For the lifting up of mountains. 

In brightness and in dread ; 
For the peaks where snow and sunshine 

Alone have dared to tread ; 
For the dark of silent gorges, 

Whence mighty cedars nod ; 
For the majesty of mountains, 

I thank Thee, O my God ! 

For the splendor of the sunsets, 

Vast mirrored on the sea ; 
For the gold-fringed clouds, that curtain 

Heaven's inner mystery ; 
For the molten bars of twihght. 

Where thought leans, glad, yet awed ; 



A THANKSGIVING. 229 

For the glory of the sunsets, 
I thank Thee, O my God ! 

For the earth, and all its beauty ; 

The sky and all its light ; 
For the dim and soothing shadows. 

That rest the dazzled sight ; 
For unfading fields and prairies. 

Where sense in vain has trod ; 
For the world's exhaustless beauty, 

I thank Thee, O my God ! 

For an eye of inward seeing ; 

A soul to know and love ; 
For these common aspirations, 

That our high heirship prove ; 
For the hearts that bless each other 

Beneath Thy smile, Thy rod ; 
For the amaranth saved from Eden, 

I thank Thee, O my God ! 

For the hidden scroll, o'erwritten 
With one dear Name adored ; 



230 A THANKSGIVING. 

For the Heavenly in the human ; 

The Spirit in the Word ; 
For the tokens of Thy presence 

Within, above, abroad ; 
For Thine own great gift of Being, 

I thank Thee, O my God ! 



OUR PRAYERS. 23 I 



OUR PRAYERS. 

A RT Thou not weary of our selfish prayers ? 
^ Forever crying, " Help me, save me, Lord ! " 
We stay fenced in by petty fears and cares. 

Nor hear the song outside, nor join its vast accord. 

And yet the truest praying is a psalm : 
The lips that open in pure air to sing 

Make entrance to the heart for health and balm ; 
And so life's urn is filled at heaven's all-brimming 
spring. 

Is not the need of other souls our need ? 

After desire the helpful act must go, 
As the strong wind bears on the winged seed 

To some bare spot of earth, and leaves it there 
to grow. 

Still are we saying, " Teach us how to pray " ? 
O teach us how to love ! and then our prayer 



232 OUR PRAYERS. 

Through other Hves will find its upward way, 
As plants together seek and find sweet life and air. 

Thy large bestowing makes us ask for more. 

Prayer widens with the world wherethrough love 
flows. 
Needy, though blest, we throng before Thy door : 
Let in Thy sunshine, Lord, on all that lives and 
grows ! 



AT THE BEAUTIFUL GATE. 233 



AT THE BEAUTIFUL GATE. 

T ORD, open the door, for I falter, 

^~^ I faint in this stifled air; 
In dust and straitness I lose my breath ; 
This life of self is a living death : 
Let me into Thy pastures broad and fair, 
To the sun and the wind from Thy mountains free ; 
Lord, open the door to me ! 

There is holier life, and truer, 

Than ever my heart has found : 
There is nobler work than is wrought within 
These walls so charred by the fires of sin. 
Where I toil like a captive blind and bound : 
An open door to a freer task 

In Thy nearer smile, I ask. 

Yet the world is Thy field, Thy garden ; 
On earth art Thou still at home. 



234 AT THE BEAUTIFUL GATE. 

When Thou bendest hither Thy hallowing eye, 
My narrow work-room seems vast and high, 
Its dingy ceiling a rainbow dome: — 
Stand ever thus at my wide-swung door, 
And toil will be toil no more. 

Through the rosy portals of morning, 

Now the tides of sunshine flow. 
O'er the blossoming earth and the glistening sea. 
The praise Thou inspirest rolls back to Thee : 
Its tones through the infinite arches go ; 
Yet, crippled and dumb, behold me wait, 

Dear Lord, at the Beautiful Gate. 

I wait for Thy hand of healing, — 

For vigor and hope in Thee. 
Open wide the door, — let me feel the sun, — 
Let me touch Thy robe : — I shall rise and run 
Through Thy happy universe, safe and free, 
Where in and out Thy beloved go, 

Nor want nor wandering know. 

Thyself art the Door, Most Holy ! 
By Thee let me enter in ! 



AT THE BEAUTIFUL GATE. 235 

I press toward Thee with my failing strength : 
Unfold Thy love in its breadth and length ! 
True life from thine let my spirit win ! 
To the Saints' fair City, the Father's Throne, 
Thou, Lord, art the way alone. 

From the deeps of unseen glory 

Now I feel the flooding light. 
O rare sweet winds from Thy hills that blow ! 
O River so calm in its crystal flow ! 
O Love unfathomed, — the depth, the height ! 
What joy wilt Thou not unto me impart, 

When Thou shalt enlarge my heart ! 

To be made with Thee one spirit. 

Is the boon that I lingering ask. 
To have no bar 'twixt my soul and Thine ; 
My thoughts to echo Thy will divine ; 
Myself Thy servant, for any task. 
Life ! life ! I may enter, through Thee, the Door, — 

Saved, sheltered forevermore ! 



236 MY ANGEL-DRESS. 



MY ANGEL-DRESS. 



T T EAVENLY Father, I would wear 

Angel-garments, white and fair : 
Angel-vesture undefiled 
Wilt Thou give unto thy child ? 



Not a robe of many hues. 
Such as earthly fathers choose ; — 
Discord weaves the gaudy vest : 
Not in such let me be drest. 

Take the raiment soiled away 
That I wear with shame to-day : 
Give my angel-robe to me, 
White with heavenly purity. 

Take away my cloak of pride, 
And the worthless rags 't would hide 
Clothe me in my angel-dress, 
Beautiful with holiness. 



MY ANGEL-DRESS. 23/ 

Perfume every fold with love, 
Hinting heaven where'er I move ; 
As an Indian vessel's sails 
Whisper of her costly bales. 

Let me wear my white robes here, 
Even on earth, my Father dear, 
Holding fast Thy hand, and so 
Through the world unspotted go. 

Let me now my white robes wear: 
Then I need no more prepare. 
All apparelled for my home 
Whensoe'er Thou callest, " Come ! " 

Thus apparelled, I shall be 
As a signal set for Thee, 
That the wretched and the weak 
May the same fair garments seek. 

"Buy of Me," I hear Thee say: 
I have naught wherewith to pay. 
But I give myself to Thee ; 
Clothed, adopted I shall be. 



2"? 8 "FOLLOW THOU ME." 



"FOLLOW THOU ME." 

/^ WHERE shall we follow Thee, Saviour be- 

^^ loved ? 

To Kedron, where oft thou hast thoughtfully roved ? 

— Each rill of enjoyment that winds through our care 
Is Kedron, if Thou wilt but walk with us there. 

O where shall we follow Thee, Jesus, our Friend ? 
To Bethany, whither thy feet loved to tend ? 

— Our fireside is Bethany, peaceful and blest ; 
And ne'er will we wander, with Thee for a guest. 

O where shall we follow Thee, Master adored.? 
To the Beautiful City that knew not her Lord ? 

— Alas for our streets, full of evil and pain ! 
Toil with us for cities wept over in vain ! 

O where shall we follow Thee, Leader Divine ? 
To Tabor, where thou in white glory didst shine ? 

— Thy face in the sin-sick and weary we see, 
When Love is the Tabor we stand on with Thee. 



"FOLLOW THOU ME." 239 

O where shall we follow Thee, tenderest Guide ? 
To the sweet, mournful garden down Olivet's side ? 

— Ah, here is Gethsemane, — here, where we mourn: 
Here strengthen us, Thou who our sorrow hast 

borne ! 

O where shall we follow Thee, dear Lamb of God ? 
Up Golgotha's death-steep, for us meekly trod ? 

— The thorns pierce our temples; the cross bears 

us down ; 
Like Thine, make our Calvary garland our crown ! 

O where shall we follow Thee, conquering Lord ? 
To Paradise, unto us outcasts restored ? 
'T is Paradise, Lord, in thy presence to be ; 
And, living or dying, we 're ever with Thee ! 



240 THY WILL BE DONE. 



THY WILL BE DONE. 

/^~\NLY silently resigned 

^^ To the counsels of Thy mind ; 

Willing, yet rejoicing not, 

That Thy purpose shall be wrought ; 

Is this truly to submit ? 
Folding placid hands, to sit, 
While innumerable feet 
Thy triumphant coming meet ? 

Shall we say, " Thy will be done ! " 
And on our own errands run ? 
Vain and evil the design 
We pursue, apart from Thine. 

Teach us how to live this prayer; 
Reverently Thy plans to share. 
More than echoes of Thy voice, — 
Make us partners in Thy choice. 



THY WILL BE DONE. 

Lift US up to catch from Thee 
World-encircling sympathy. 
Ardor, strength, and courage give 
As Thou livest, let us live ! 

Let our deeds be syllables 

Of the prayer our spirit swells. 

In us Thy desire fulfil; 

By us work Thy gracious will! 



241 



II 



242 THE STILL HOUR. 



THE STILL HOUR. 

'TpHE quiet of a shadow-haunted pool 

Where light breaks through in glorious ten- 
derness, 
Where the tranced pilgrim in the shelter cool 
Forgets the way's distress ; 

Such is this hour, this silent hour with Thee ! 

The trouble of the restless heart is still, 
And every swaying wish breathes reverently 
The whisper of Thy will. 

Father, our thoughts are rushing wildly on, 

Tumultuous, clouded with their own vain strife ; 
Darkened by cares from our own planting grown ; — 
We call the tumult life. 

And something of Thy presence still is given : 
The keen light flashing from the seething foam, 



THE STILL HOUR. 243 

Through tangled boughs the sudden glimpse of 
heaven, 
From Thee, Thee only, come. 

And beautiful it is to catch Thy smile 

Amid the rush, the hurrying flow of mind ; 
To feel Thy glance upon us all the while, 
Most holy and most kind ! 

More blest this hour of heavenly quietness, 
When, -as a lake that opens to the sky. 
The soul serene in its great blessedness 
Looks up to meet Thine eye ! 

Fountain of Life, in Thee alone is Light ! 

Shine through our being, cleansing us of sin. 
Till we grow lucid with Thy presence bright, 
The peace of God within. 

Yet not alone as Light pervading come ; — 

O Thou Divine One, meet us as a Friend ! 
Only with Thee is every heart at home : 
Stay with us to the end ! 



244 THE STILL HOUR. 

By the stream's windings let us with Thee talk 

Of this strange earth-life Thou so well hast known 
In Thy fresh footprints let us heavenward walk,— 
No more to grope alone ! 

If in our thoughts, by Thee made calm and clear, 

The brightening image of Thy face we see, 
What hour of all our lives can be so dear 
As this still hour with Thee ! 



THE COMING LIFE. 



HEAVEN'S NEED. 

'^/'E who, passing, bore away 

Best of sunshine from our day, — 
That rare glory which revives 
On the sky of clouded lives. 
When, through mists at evening rent, 
Rays from inmost heaven are sent, — 
What of earth to you remains, 
Mid imperishable gains ? 

Mother-love, unchilled by change, 
Absence wide, and coldness strange, — 
Mother-love, that here must yearn 
Vainly for its full return 
From the shallow heart of youth, ~ 
Art requited now, in truth ? 
Or does thy dumb longing go 
Through heaven's happy overflow ? 



248 HEAVEN'S NEED. 

Sister-love, so calm, so wise ! 
Starlight, risen on darkened skies ; 
Heart that made its rifled nest 
Shelter for the homeless guest, — 
Of thy tenderness bereft, 
Little warmth in life is left. 
Has that new world's flood of bliss 
Swept apart the ties of this? 



None may name a drearier thought ; — 
Hearts we lean on need us not. 
If they ask for us no more, 
Gathering in heaven's affluent store. 
Life is lonelier than we knew ; 
Sharper anguish thrills death through. 
In this rubbish-heap of earth 
Hides no pearl heaven's saving worth ? 



God is good. His face they see, 
And are glad eternally. 
Yet they hear love's wordless prayer, — 
Sigh that stirs the peaceful air. 



HEAVEN'S NEED. 249 



And our yearning secret tells 
To the bending asphodels. 
Lacks one drop their cup to fill ; 
Still they want us, wait us still. 



II 



250 THE CHAMBER CALLED PEACE. 



THE CHAMBER CALLED PEACE.^ 

/^^N a hill-top, divested of trouble, I rested, 
^^^ One blue, starry night, 

In a fair eastern chamber, where vines strove to 
clamber 
And play in the light. 
There star-beams, uncertain, crept down through 
a curtain 
Of thin, airy fleece ; 
There, veiling her brightness in silvery whiteness, 
The moonlight, caressing, stole in with a blessing, 
To the chamber called Peace. 

The mountains surrounding, with radiance abounding. 

In the broad blaze of day. 
Encircled my spirit, to strengthen and cheer it. 
When the night-purple lay 
Like a mantle upon them, and silence had won 
them, 
Bold prophets, to cease 



THE CHAMBER CALLED PEACE. 2$l 

From their unfinished story of Infinite Glory : 
But its echo, low-breathing, like incense came 
wreathing 
The chamber called Peace. 

Though dripping November had quenched the last 
ember 
Of autumn's red fire, 
A presence enchanted the forest yet haunted ; 
It could not expire : 
It lit the leaves, flying from winds feebly sighing 

For summer's decease ; 
Touched the birches white-fingered, that silently 

lingered. 
Where pine-choirs were sending an anthem un- 
ending 
Through the chamber called Peace. 

In a still flood of amber. Dawn entered the chamber. 

The sleeper to rouse. 
A rose-cloud passed slowly, — a messenger holy. 

At pause for the vows 
Of pilgrims awaking ; — then lifting and breaking 

From a rich, robing fleece. 



252 THE CHAMBER CALLED PEACE. 

Like an Eye fondly glowing, a Heart overflowing, 
The sun, proud and tender, lit up with full 
splendor 
The chamber called Peace. 

In that white, wayside dwelling, one pilgrim was 
swelling 
Her heavenward lay. 
The strength of the mountains, the joy of their 
fountains. 
Had gladdened her stay : 
The pine-trees' deep sighing, the wind's low re- 
plying, 
For her soon would cease ; 
But a holier singing the angels were bringing 
To her dawn-lighted chamber, all whiteness and 
amber. 
Her chamber called Peace. 

O, joy was it, staying where angels were playing 

The sweet airs of heaven 
To one blest immortal, whose rest at the portal 

Half open, was given. 
While we, scarcely grieving, awaited her leaving, 

Her hour of release. 



THE CHAMBER CALLED PEACE. 2^3 

Hills and heavens around us, like walls seemed 

to bound us, 
Of a Home all unblighted, a Mansion love-lighted, 
A chamber called Peace. 

For, on earth or in heaven, to true hearts is given 

One quiet abode ; 
One mighty Arm guards them, one blessing rewards 
them, — 
The Presence of God ! 
The stairs in declining fail not of their shining, 

Through daylight's increase : 
They who pass on before us leave dawn break- 
ing o'er us. 
Lighting up, through death's grating, our cham- 
ber of waiting. 
Our chamber called Peace. 



254 A YEAR IN HEAVEN. 



A YEAR IN HEAVEN. 



/^NE year among the angels, beloved, thou hast 

^"^^ been ; 

One year has heaven's white portal shut back the 

sound of sin : 
And yet no voice,, no whisper, comes floating down 

from thee, 
To tell us what glad wonder a year of heaven may 

be. 



Our hearts before it listen, — the beautiful closed 

gate: 
The silence yearns around us ; we hsten and we 

wait. 
It is thy heavenly birthday, on earth thy lilies 

bloom ; 
In thine immortal garland canst find for these no 

room ? 



A YEAR IN HEAVEN. 255 

Thou lovedst all things lovely when walking with 

us here ; 
Now, from the heights of heaven, seems earth no 

longer dear ? 
We cannot paint thee moving in white-robed state 

afar, 
Nor dream our flower of comfort a cool and dis- 

tant star. 

Heaven is but life made richer : therein can be no 

loss : 
To meet our love and longing thou hast no gulf 

to cross ; 
No adamant between us uprears its rocky screen ; 
A veil before us only ; — thou in the light serene. 

That veil 'twixt earth and heaven a breath might 

waft aside ; 
We breathe one air, beloved, we follow one dear 

Guide : 
Passed in to open vision, out of our mists and rain, 
Thou seest how sorrow blossoms ; how peace is won 

from pain. 



256 A YEAR IN HEAVEN. 

And half we feel thee leaning from thy deep calm 

of bliss, 
To say of earth, " Beloved, how beautiful it is ! 
The lilies in this splendor, — the green leaves in this 

dew ; — 
O, earth is also heaven, with God's light clothed 

anew ! " 

So, when the sky seems bluer, and when the blos- 
soms wear 

Some tender, mystic shading we never knew was 
there. 

We '11 say " We see things earthly by light of sainted 
eyes ; 

She bends where we are gazing, to-day, from Para- 
dise." 

Because we know thee near us, and nearer still to 

Him 
Who fills thy cup of being with glory to the brim, 
We will not stain with grieving our fair, though 

fainter light, 
But cling to thee in spirit as if thou wert in sight. 



A YEAR IN HEAVEN. 25/ 

And as in waves of beauty the swift years come 

and go, 
Upon celestial currents our deeper life shall flow, 
Hearing, from that sweet country where blighting 

never came. 
Love chime the hours immortal, in earth and heaven 

the same. 



258 BY THE FIRESIDE. 



BY THE FIRESIDE. 

"^T THAT is it fades and flickers in the fire, 

Mutters and sighs, and yields reluctant breath, 
As if in the red embers some desire. 

Some word prophetic, burned, defying death ? 

Lords of the forest, stalwart oak and pine, 
Lie down for us in flames of martyrdom : 

A human, household warmth, their death-fires shine ; 
Yet fragrant with high memories they come ; 

Bringing the mountain-winds that in their boughs 
Sang of the torrent, and the plashy edge 

Of storm-swept lakes ; and echoes that arouse 
The eagles from some splintered eyrie-ledge ; 

And breath of violets sweet about their roots ; 

And earthy odors of the moss and fern ; 
And hum of rivulets ; smell of ripening fruits ; 

And green leaves that to gold and crimson turn. 



BY THE FIRESIDE. 259 

What clear Septembers fade out in a spark ! 

What rare Octobers drop with every coal ! 
Within these costly ashes, dumb and dark, 

Are hid spring's budding hope, and summer's soul. 

Pictures far lovelier smoulder in the fire. 

Visions of friends who walked among these trees, 

Whose presence, like the free air, could inspire 
A winged life and boundless sympathies. 

Eyes with a glow like that in the brown beech. 
When sunset through its autumn beauty shines ; 

Or the blue gentian's look of silent speech. 
To heaven appealing as earth's light declines ; 

Voices and steps forever fled away 

From the familiar glens, the haunted hills, — 
Most pitiful and strange it is to stay 

Without you in a world your lost love fills. 

Do you forget us, — under Eden-trees, 

Or in full sunshine on the hills of God, — 

Who miss you from the shadow and the breeze, 
A nd tints and perfumes of the woodland sod ? 



260 BY THE FIRESIDE. 

Dear for your sake the fireside where we sit 

Watching these sad, bright pictures come and go ; 

That waning years are with your memory lit, 
Is now the lonely comfort that we know. 

Is it all memory ? Lo, these forest-boughs 

Burst on the hearth into fresh leaf and bloom ; 

Waft a vague, far-off sweetness through the house, 
And give close walls the hillside's breathing-room. 

A second life, more spiritual than the first. 
They find, a life won only out of death. — 

O sainted souls, within you still is nursed 
For us a flame not fed by mortal breath. 

Unseen, you bring to this, erewhile your home, 
Fresh air from the new country close above ; 

Through no oblivious heaven your footsteps roam ; 
Alive in God, you bless us with His love. 



NEAR SHORE. 26 1 



NEAR SHORE. 

^ I ^HE seas of thought are deep and wide ; 

Let those who will, O friend of mine, 
Sail forth without a chart or guide. 

Or plummet-line ; 

A blank of waters all around, — 
A blank of azure overhead, — 
An infinite of nothing found. 

Whence faith has fled. 

The Name that we with reverence speak, 
Echoes across those wastes of thought ; 
But they who go far off to seek, 

They hear it not. 

The shores give back its sweetest sound 

From rivulet cool, and shadowing rock, 
And voices that calm hearths surround 

With friendly talk. 



262 NEAR SHORE. 

Earth is our little island home, 

And heaven the neighboring continent, 
Whence winds to every inlet come 

With balmiest scent. 

And tenderest whispers thence we hear 

From those who lately sailed across. 
They love us still ; since heaven is near, 

Death is not loss. 

From mountain slopes of breeze and balm. 

What melodies arrest the oar ! 
What memories ripple through the calm ! 

We '11 keep near shore. 

By sweet home instincts wafted on. 

By all the hopes that life has nursed, 
We hasten where the loved have gone. 

Who landed first. 

If God be God, then heaven is real : 

We need not lose ourselves and Him 
In some vast sea of the ideal, 

Dreamy and dim. 



NEAR SHORE. 263 

He cheats not any soul. He gave 

Each being unity like His ; 
Love, that links beings, He must save; 

Of Him it is. 

Dear friend, we will not drift too far 

Mid billows, fogs, and blinding foam,. 
To see Christ's beacon-Hght, — the star 

That guides us home. 

Moving toward heaven, we '11 meet half-way 

Some pilot from that unseen strand ; 
Then, anchoring safe in perfect day. 

Tread the firm land. 

Then onward and forever on 

Toward summits piled on summits bright. 
The lost are found, and we have won 

The Land of Light ! 

God is that country's glory : He 
Alike the confidence is found 
Of those who try the uncertain sea 

Or solid ground. 



264 NEAR SHORE. 

Yet we, for love of those who bend 

From yon clear heights, passed on before 
To wait our coming, — we, dear friend, 

Will keep near shore. 



ACROSS THE RIVER. 265 



ACROSS THE RIVER. 

"\T THEN for me the silent oar 

Parts the Silent River, 
And I stand upon the shore 

Of the strange Forever, 
Shall I miss the loved and known ? 
Shall I vainly seek mine own ? 

Mid the crowd that come to meet 

Spirits sin-forgiven, — 
Listening to their echoing feet 

Down the streets of heaven, — 
Shall I know a footstep near 
That I listen, wait for here ? 

Then will one approach the brink 

With a hand extended. 
One whose thoughts I loved to think 

Ere the veil was rended. 
Saying " Welcome ! we have died. 
And again are side by side." 



266 ACROSS THE RIVER. 

Saying, " I will go with thee, 
That thou be not lonely, 

To yon hills of mystery : 
I have waited only 

Until now, to climb with thee 

Yonder hills of mystery." 

Can the bonds that make us here 
Know ourselves immortal, 

Drop away, like foHage sear, 
At life's inner portal ? 

What is holiest below 

Must forever live and grow. 

I shall love the angels well. 
After I have found them 

In the mansions where they dwell, 
With the glory round them. 

But at first, without surprise, 

Let me look in human eyes. 

Step by step our feet must go 
Up the holy mountain ; 

Drop by drop, within us flow, 
Life's unfailing fountain. 



ACROSS THE RIVER. 26/ 

Angels sing with crowns that burn ; 
We shall have a song to learn. 

He who on our earthly path 

Bids us help each other — 
Who his Well-beloved hath 

Made our Elder Brother — 
Will but clasp the chain of love 
Closer, when we meet above. 

Therefore dread I not to go 

O'er the Silent River. 
Death, thy hastening oar I know ; 

Bear me, thou Life-giver, 
Through the waters, to the shore, 
Where mine own have gone before ! 



268 MORE LIFE. 



MORE LIFE. 

OT weary of Thy world, 
So beautiful, O Father, in Thy love, 
Thy world, that, glory-lighted from above, 
Lies in thy hand impearled : 



N 



Not asking rest from toil ; — 
Sweet toil, that draws us nearer to Thy side ; 
Ever to tend Thy planting satisfied, 

Though in ungenial soil : 

Nor to be freed from care. 
That lifts us out of self's lone hoUowness ; 
Since unto Thy dear feet we all may press, 

And leave our burdens there : 

But O for tireless strength ! 
A life untainted by the curse of sin, 
That spreads no vile contagion from within ; — 

Found without spot, at length ! 



MORE LIFE. 269 

For power, and stronger will 
To pour out love from the heart's inmost springs ; 
A constant freshness for all needy things ; 

In blessing, blessed still ! 

O to be clothed upon 
With the white radiance of a heavenly form ! 
To feel the winged Psyche quit the worm, 

Life, life eternal won ! 

O to be free, heart-free 
From all that checks the right endeavor here ! 
To drop the weariness, — the pain, — the fear, — 

To know death cannot be ! 

O but to breathe in air 
Where there can be no tyrant and no slave ; 
Where every thought is pure, and high, and brave, 

And all that is is fair! 

More life ! the life of heaven ! 
A perfect liberty to do Thy will : 
Receiving all from Thee, and giving still, 

Freely as Thou hast given ! 



270 MORE LIFE. 

More life ! a prophecy 
Is in that thirsty cry, if read aright. 
Deep calleth unto deep : Life Infinite, 

O soul, awaiteth thee ! 



NOTES 



NOTES. 



Note I. Page 82. 

*' Below, on each side of the door, are two beautiful groups. 
That to the right of the spectator represents Siegfried and Chriem- 
hild. She is leaning on the shoulder of her warlike husband, with an 
air of the most inimitable and graceful abandonment in her whole 
figure : a falcon sits upon her hand, on which her eyes are turned with 
the most profound expression of tenderness and melancholy ; she is 
thinking upon her dream, in which was foreshadowed the early and 
terrible doom of her husband." — Mrs. Jameson. — Description of the 
new palace at Munich. 

Note 2. Page 85. 
From Mrs. Jameson's ''Legends of the Monastic Orders." 

Note 3. Page 93. 

" King Robert the Second of France was author of the touching 
hymn, in which all his gentle nature seems to speak : — * Veni Sancte 
Spiritus.' King Robert had certainly more of the monk than the king 
about him. Necessity drove him to the cares and the state of royalty ; 
but his joys were in church-music, which he composed, in devotion, 
and in alms-giving." — Christian Life in Song. 

12* R 



274 NOTES. 

Note 4. Page 192. 

Suggested by a bas-relief of the prophet Jeremiah, by Margue- 
rite Foley, an American lady residing in Italy. 

Note 5. Page 217. 

" But why I went hence, and went thither, Thou knewest, O God, 
yet shewedst it neither to me, nor to my mother, who grievously be- 
wailed my journey, and followed me as far as the sea. But I deceived 
her ; and I feigned that I had a friend whom I could not leave till he 
had a fair wind to sail. And yet refusing to return without me, I 
scarcely persuaded her to stay that night in a place hard by our ship, 
where was an Oratory in memory of the blessed Cyprian. And what 
was she asking with so many tears of Thee, but that thou wouldst not 
suffer me to sail ? But Thou, in the depth of Thy counsels, and hear- 
ing the main point of her desire, regardedst not what she then asked, 
that Thou mightest make me what she ever asked. The wind blew 
and filled our sails, and withdrew the shore from sight ; and she on the 
morrow was there, frantic with sorrow." — Confessions of St. Augustine. 

"For whence was that dream whereby Thou comfortedst her.? — 
She saw herself standing on a certain wooden rule, and a shining 
youth coming towards her, cheerful and smiling upon her, herself 
grieving. But he, having inquired the cause of her grief and daily 
tears, told her to look and observe ' That where she was, there was I 
also.' And when she looked, she saw me standing by her in the same 
rule. When I would fain bend the vision to mean, that she rather 
should not despair of being one day what I was ; she replied " No ; 
for it was not told me, ' Where he, there thou also ' ; but, ' Where 
thou, there he also.' " — Ibid. 

" She and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window which looked 
into the garden of the house where we now lay, at Ostia. We were 
discoursing then together, alone, very sweetly. . . . Such things was 



NOTES. 275 

I speaking, when my mother said ; ' Son, for mine own part I have 
no further any delight in this life. What I do here any longer, and 
why I am here, I know not, now that my hopes in this world are ac- 
complished. One thing there was for which I desired to linger a little 
while in this life, that I might see thee a Catholic Christian before I 
died. My God hath done this for me more abundantly : what do I 
here > ' Scarce five days after she fell sick of a fever. On the ninth 
day of her sickness was that religious and holy soul freed from the 
body:'— /did. 

Note 6. Page 250. 

" The Pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose window 
opened towards the sun-rising : the name of the chamber was Peace." 
— Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 



THE END. 



Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



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